Facebook and Privacy: Learn How to Adjust Your Settings

I recently posted about Facebook and how fun it is. Since then, many of you have signed up and are getting a feel for what social networking has to offer. The more I play with FB myself, the more I want to know. A primary concern I have dealt with is privacy. How can I control who sees what?

I did some research last week or the week before and thought it would pertinent to share it here.


Friends Lists
This is really good and will facilitate easy management of your friends. I have several lists: Family, Friends, Caution (and others). The benefit of having a friends list is that not only can you do mass messaging to say, your family group, but you can also set permissions based on a list. If you have added a someone as a friend but don't want to give them full access to you on FB you can add them to a flagged list (like my Caution) as well as other applicable lists.

1. First, if you click "Friends" in the blue bar.
2. Click Create List.
3. Enter a name.
4. Start adding people to the list by typing their names or choosing multiple people.

Privacy Settings
Once you have established lists, you can adjust your privacy settings.

1. Go to the blue Facebook bar at the top and hover (hold you mouse over but don't click) over Settings, then click on Privacy Settings. This will list lots of settings you can change.
2. Click on Profile.

The profile privacy settings let you determine who sees what. For example, if you take a look at each of the subheadings, you can adjust if just your friends, or your network, or whatever, sees which part of your profile. As you explore, notice that for any setting you can also block a list of friends. So, you may want to block access to your "Caution" list from seeing your friends list, photos tagged of you, whatever... Be sure to save the changes (bottom of the page with all the options) as you go along.

As you make changes to your privacy settings, you can see how other people will view your pages (wall, etc..) by typing in their name near the top next to "See how a friends sees your profile". You can see how different lists of friends see you on FB.

News Feed and Wall Settings
Another thing to change are the News Feed and Wall settings (back up in Settings-Privacy Settings). You can also block people or restrict to certain lists here. I think that may be less important overall.

Group Settings
If you are a member of a group you can change settings in those areas, too.
1. Just navigate to the group, then at the top, hover over Settings.
2. Choose Groups Settings in the drop-down now.

You can restrict if group stories are published to your wall, what friends list can actually see them, and what lists are blocked.

Photo Privacy
Finally, you can edit who sees your photos.
1. Go to Profile.
2. Click on the Photos tab.
3. Then click on Album Privacy on that page.



Other Fun Stuff

Facebook released a new feature that can remind you of upcoming birthdays via an email notification. If you opt in, you will receive an email on the weekend summarizing the upcoming birthdays of your friends for the next week. Here is how to enable it:
1. Hover over Settings and choose Account Settings.
2. Click the Notifications heading.
3. Under the "Facebook" section, click "Show More".
4. Turn on "Has a birthday coming up".



I hope this helps! Have a fun, safe, time on Facebook!