Facebook Settings 101: Privacy Settings

This is the second of three posts about the basics of Facebook settings. If you didn't read it, you might want to go back and look at the first post, which talks about Facebook's Account Settings.

Before you start looking at your privacy settings on Facebook, it's probably a good idea to click on Account (at the top of the page) and go to "Edit Friends". One of the really useful things about this page is that it allows you to organize your friends in different lists. A default list will be friends who belong to your network. You can set up additional lists, though, which is a good idea since it will help you control who can see what on your profile (you might not want your great aunt to see the same things your best friend can see). We're used to giving out information freely, but it's safer and wiser to think about what people really need to know about you and to tell people only what you really want them to know. So, I'd recommend setting up at least one additional list to help you control who can see what.

Now, if you click on "Account" and then select "Privacy Settings" you can start setting things up. The first screen you see gives you a quick glance at your privacy settings and allows you to choose from several preset options for controlling your privacy. It is a bad idea to use the "Everyone" preset as that will allow anyone to access all of your information posted on Facebook. The best option is probably to choose the "Recommended" preset and then customize it from there.

Clicking on "Customize settings"brings up a page where you can create settings for each category of information. I won't go into detail about what each category of personal information means (it's mostly self-explanatory); instead, I want to focus on the button with a padlock on it to the right of each category (except "Allow friends to post on my wall"). Clicking that button lets you choose from five options for who can see that category of information: Everyone, Friends and Networks, Friends of Friends, Only Friends, and Custom.

You can see the role that Networks (we talked about them in the post about Account Settings) play in privacy settings. You can imagine the privacy setting options as a set of concentric rings. At the center is you, then your friends, then your friends' friends, then your network(s), then everyone. As you go farther out there are more people. So, if you don't want a lot of people to see your information, you have to set your privacy settings accordingly.

You might have some friends who you don't want to let see as much as other friends are able to see. If this is the case, you should use the "Custom" option. Clicking "Custom" brings up a window with two parts: "Make this visible to:" and "Hide this from:". This allows you to control who can see or not see that category of information down to the levels of individuals. Here you can also use the lists of people you have set up to control your privacy. It's a lot easier than selecting people one at a time.

Just a couple of notes about the rest of these settings:

• Facebook recently simplified the privacy settings so it's a good idea to look at them if you haven't in a while.
• You can set the privacy options for your photo albums by clicking "Edit album privacy." It's important to do this because the default settings for your photo albums may not be what you want them to be.
• It's not a good idea to let everyone see your contact information. Remember that everyone means everyone, not just your friends, not just your networks, and not even just people on Facebook.
• You can see what your Facebook profile looks like to different people by clicking on "Preview my Profile".