Facebook Privacy…
Facebook recently changed their privacy controls. You may have seen a prompt on your most recent login telling you that things were changing, but the statements and information that they gave you was so cryptic, you probably ended up just clicking the OK button. Don’t worry, I did too.
However, I went back through my privacy settings and found a couple of things that were either public when I wanted them private or private when I wanted them public. I’ll show you what settings you can adjust, some considerations on how to adjust them, and some recommended privacy settings to get you going.
Here is the list of items you can control with privacy controls:
What the settings mean
Your profile contains tons of information such as your address, religion and politics, wall posts, joined Fan Pages, posting on friends’ walls, your friends’ posting on your wall, and links, just to name a few. Any of the settings here will be the default action next time more information is added. However, when posting an individual item, you are free to change the settings just for that item alone.
We’ll run through a few examples how to judge what settings you should apply privacy settings to the information on your profile.
You might like to share your favorite TV show, Barney the Purple Dinosaur, and your favorite activity, logging contests (both a part of the Personal Info section) with your Friends and their Friends. Through these connections, you might find other Barney choppers out there and start hanging out. Sharing with Friends of Friends allows you to connect with people loosely connected with you.
On the other hand, you might like only your friends to know that you blew nearly $120k a sub-par private college instead of $40k on a stellar state school education. Sharing with Friends Only keeps that information only with those you know well enough to accept as your friend.
What if you accept people you met once at a Port-O-John at a Phish Concert as your friends? Well, there is also a Customize setting that allows you to fine tune your privacy to exclude your patchouli-smelling pseudo-friend.
Good! Looks like I don’t have a friend named Patchouli-Smelling Pseudo-Friend.
There may be items that you don’t mind sharing with the world. For example, after posting on The Digitante site, I post a link to the article I’ve written on Facebook. I’ve set those links to default to sharing with the world. If I happened to have a link that I didn’t care to share with the world, I would have to remember to use this little button to change the setting just for that link.
So what should I do?
The first rule of thumb is to set your privacy controls to the lowest level possible and then slowly ratchet them up. I would recommend setting everything to Friends Only. At that point, go through each item, look at it on your profile and ask yourself, “Who do am I ok with seeing this?” If you are ok with Friends of Friends seeing it, but not Everyone, then set it appropriately.
Secondly, DON’T BE PASSIVE! It took me less than 20 minutes to go through my whole profile and adjust my settings. It would take you even less if you simple marked everything Friends Only. Then if someone mentioned they couldn’t see a particular part, you could change settings later. Your privacy is important.
If you have other tips on Facebook privacy, let me know in the comments. If you had an embarrassing situation with Facebook (or know someone who did), feel free to share, if you want.
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