Need help through the minefield of Facebook privacy settings? There’s a tool for that.

I have had to figure out my way through more than my fair share of profile settings pages over my time on the web but I swear that the thought of trying to figure out my Facebook account’s privacy settings gives me hives. I’ve also read more than enough posts that have been written about the subject but I generally have the shakes so bad after reading them I run screaming from the computer when I log onto Facebook (figuratively speaking of course).

Well thanks to Kim-Mai Cutler over at VentureBeat I may have found a workable solution to this Facebook insanity. It is a bookmarklet called PrivacyDefender which was developed by ReputationDefender and once you have it installed and have logged into your Facebook page a simple click will set PrivacyDefender to work.

Of course this interactive tool won’t be for everyone as Michael Fertik, ReputationDefender’s chief executive, puts it

“The idea is to make it usable by my mom and my dad,” he said. “It’s not for engineers or tech wonks.”

Right now the changeable controls won’t be granular enough for some people but the company plans on improving PrivacyDefender so that even people with different types of groups, with different privacy settings for each, will be able to use the tool.

I tried it out on my Facebook account to see how it worked. When I first fired it up this is how PrivacyDefender saw my settings

After fiddling around with the controls and seeing what was available this is what I have now

So if you can’t face the thought of having to deal with Facebook’s questionable privacy setting head on maybe PrivacyDefneder can help you through the mess.