Facebook Privacy
When you set up your Facebook account you will no doubt be concerned about your privacy. Do you really want everyone to see pictures of you or your family? Do you want everyone to know your address details?
All concerns I had, at first.
These features are controlled using ‘Privacy Settings’ in the Account Menu at the top right of the screen.
By default, there are some basic privacy settings already switched on, (and everyone who looks at your page can see the things listed).
Everyone who looks at your page is categorised into 3 basic groups; “friends”, “friends of friends” or “everyone”. According to their category they get to see different areas of information.
Here is the list
You can use the “Customise settings” button at the bottom of the page to fine tune the basic access levels of each area.
If you click on this you will see the following
And the list goes on so you can control who see’s any area on your Facebook page.
If you want to be very specific about what users can see you need to use ‘Lists’.
A ‘List’ is a list of people who are allowed to see things. For example, you may only want your real world friends and family to be able to see your ‘Wall’ or ‘Your Profile’.
To do this you must set up a ‘List’ that contains these people (the list could just be 1 person to start with).
To summarise – there are 3 levels of security-
1 Default settings – set by Facebook
2 Customised default settings
3 Create Lists to specify access levels by individual users
Setting up a List
Click Home
Click Account menu / Edit Friends
Click ‘Create a list’ button
Give the list a name
(I have called this one Personal and have selected my wife as the only member for now. I will add more people to this list as I need to)
Now you need to set the parts you want to keep private and personal to only be allowed to be viewed by this List.
Define what this List can see
Select Account menu / Privacy settings
Click on ‘Customise settings’ at the bottom of the page.
Change any part that you do not want others to see so that only the ‘Personal’ group can see it
Each of the main headings, such as ‘Posts by me’ or ‘Relationships’ can have more than one group attached to them if you wish, but only people in those groups will be able to see those items.
So you may wish to have a ‘Personal’ and ‘Public’ face.
To test this out, you can check out how others are seeing your Facebook page.
Checking how others see you
If you are not already in the Privacy settings / Customise settings area, select
Account menu / Privacy settings / Customise settings
Choose ‘Preview my Profile’
Using the box at the top of the screen, type in the name of one of your Facebook friends.
This will show you the view they will get.
e.g. When I typed my wife’s name in, remember, she is the only person in the group ‘Personal’, she could see my Wall (Posts by me), Family, Relationships and my email address.
When I typed another Facebook friend who was not in that List, they could only see the other items available.
Adding others to the Personal group
I will then want others to be able to see some of these things, so I add them to the Personal List.
Select Accounts menu / Edit friends
From the left hand side, select the list ‘Personal’
This will show only the members from that list.
On the right hand side is a column showing all your Facebook friends, to add them to this list click on the plus (+) sign next to the Facebook friend you wish to add.
