Facebook founder & CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced some big changes to the privacy policies of the social networking site to improve its image.

A new set of privacy controls were introduced on Wednesday to allow users much easier management of who can access their personal information.

Mr. Zuckerberg said that they were overhauling the privacy settings to prevent the potential misuse of users’ personal information.

Now, there will be a single control which will limit who can access the content posted by a Facebook user. The new settings will also allow users to have control over who can access their list of friends and their personal pages. Such information was previously available to all Facebook users.

Third-party websites will also not be able to access users’ personal information without permission. Announcing the new settings, Mr. Zuckerberg said, “If you find these changes helpful, then we plan to keep this privacy framework for a long time.”

Facebook is facing criticism for trying to generate profits by pushing members to share more and more personal information. It is also blamed of making individual privacy controls too complicated. Concerns over privacy have encouraged many Facebook users to ditch the controversial site.

Facebook claims that it has more than 500 million users around the world.