Until now, when users signed up for Facebook their posts defaulted to public until they changed their privacy settings. Facebook will now set the default for new users to friends-only. First time posters will also see a reminder to choose an audience for their first post, and if they don't make a choice, it will be set to Friends. People can change who they are posting to at any time, and can also change the privacy of their past posts too.

In addition, over the next few weeks, Facebook will start rolling out an expanded privacy checkup tool, which will take people through a few steps to review things like who they?re posting to, which apps they use, and the privacy of key pieces of information on their profile.

Facebook engineering manager Raylene Yung says the tool is the result of user feedback and decisions by the company to improve the user experience.