Public Vs. Private

In addition to my observations of Public and Private Profiles and the security settings that Facebook introduced in response to criticisms over security and safety.

It is good to read what I had written before and I now have a few more observations. The section "reluctant user" needs a little more background.

The Consequences of posting everything "Private"

As I said before your profile is always "Public", if you make changes to your profile like updating the photo, everyone will see.

You have the option to select who sees your Friends List, although I cannot confirm that this works.

New users will have their posts default to "private". Consequently a user who is not a "Friend" will only see your profile and any posts that you have specified to be "public". Seeing that most users will not how to do this it will appear to "non-friends" that all you do is update your profile (most likely the photo!).