With over 400 million active users, odds are that you or at least a good number of your friends use Facebook. One of the reasons for Facebook’s immense popularity is the ease with which it lets you share photos and posts with all of your friends. However, this also means that that photo of you passed out in the bathroom that your friend put online can easily be seen by your grandmother or any number of people you might not have thought about.
Why Online Privacy Matters
As people put more information about themselves online, privacy at networking sites like Facebook becomes more important. Allowing everyone to see everything you do on Facebook can create personal problems between friends, families, and significant others even if they only arise from misunderstandings. After all, there is no sarcasm button on Facebook (feel free to use that idea, Mr. Zuckerberg).
In addition, employers are using Facebook more and more to screen job applicants and if they see anything they deem unprofessional on your profile, it can hurt your chances of getting hired. Police in some towns have also started using Facebook to issue citations to minors who have pictures of themselves drinking online.
These issues aren’t trivial and concern about Facebook’s privacy policy has grown in the past few months since Facebook changed the way users manage their privacy settings. Keeping your information on Facebook is still possible, but you have to make sure you have adjusted your privacy settings to your liking. Here’s what you need to know to stay safe.
Facebook’s Privacy Changes
In December of 2009, Facebook changed its privacy settings page to contain over fifty different settings and changed the default settings so that more information about their users was public. This caused a large backlash and Facebook revamped the controls again in late May.
The new privacy scheme streamlined most of the privacy options and shared less of your profile with the world by default. The default settings still aren’t private enough for many users, though, and responsible Facebook users should check their settings to ensure that they are to their liking. If you know your way around Facebook you can control pretty much exactly what everyone sees with a few exceptions; your name, profile picture, gender, and networks are always visible to all users.
Navigating Facebook’s Privacy Settings
In order to access Facebook’s privacy settings you need to log into your account, click the “Account” button in the upper right corner of the screen, and then select “Privacy Settings” from the drop down menu. You should see two main areas: “Basic Directory Information” and “Sharing on Facebook.” The directory information section lets your control who can see your basic information such as your friend list, your education and work, and your hometown. You can also control who can search for your profile on Facebook and who can send your messages.
The sharing section is a little more complicated. This is where you control who can see your wall posts, your photos, pictures people have tagged you in, etc. The default and Facebook recommended settings are as follows:
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Everyone
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Friends of Friends
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Friends Only
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Your status, your photos, and your posts
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x
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Your bio and favorite quotations
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x
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Your family and relationships
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x
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Photos and videos you are tagged in
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x
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Your religious and political views
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x
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Your birthday
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x
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Who can comment on your posts
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x
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Your email address and IM screen name
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x
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Your phone number(s) and address
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x
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There are also options for sharing everything with everyone, friends of friends, just friends, and customized settings. Customizing your settings is recommended because only you know what information you want to share with your Facebook contacts. By customizing your privacy settings you can choose which friends can see what you post and what other people post about you. From the custom settings page you can also preview your profile as though you are anyone else on Facebook so you can make sure you set everything correctly.
Changing Privacy Setting for Wall Posts and Links
One final piece of Facebook privacy advice: You can control who sees your wall posts and links you share by clicking on the picture of a padlock next to the share button. This overrides your current privacy settings so you can either let everyone know about you favorite LOLcat or you can hide the fact that you’re a Justin Bieber fan from all but your closest friends. This doesn’t work for your comments on other people’s status updates or for using the “like” button, so make sure to look for the padlock before posting if you want something to be different from your default settings.
All of this may seem like a complicated exercise to undertake just to be able to share photos of yourself with your friends, but in an increasingly interconnected world you need to know how to control who has access to information about yourself. One of the last things you want is the cops showing up at your house because your friend Photoshopped you robbing a bank and then tagged you in it for everyone to see.