Facing privacy concerns

Despite what you may have heard, your life is not an open book on Facebook. You can protect your privacy by:

1. Making use of friend lists

Friend lists allow you to group your friends into different categories. So, you can make one list for your school friends, another list for your friends from the hockey team, and a third list for your colleagues. You can then view your friends by type and send messages to various lists.

Each list can have its own privacy settings. So, you can allow your school friends, but not your colleagues, see the photos of you dancing on a bar last weekend. To adjust settings for your friend lists, go to the friends area of your FB.

To create a list, click on the “friends” link, and under ‘”lists” on the left side, click “create.” To restrict sharing information with only certain lists, go to “settings,” “privacy settings” and click “profile.” Select a profile item’s drop-down menu and choose “customize.” Then select “some friends” in the pop-up, and enter the name of the friends list you want to choose.

2. Removing yourself from FB search results

You can easily remove yourself from FB’s search results. Just go to the “search privacy settings” page and determine who will be able to find you in a search – just your friends or your friends as well as those in your network, etc. Click “save changes.” Select “customize” from the “search visibility” drop-down to further adjust your settings.

3. Removing yourself from search engines

FB displays parts of user profiles in search engines. Some users want to be visible on Google but others don’t. If you’re in the latter category, go to the “search privacy settings page” and adjust the visibility of your public search listing. You can turn it off altogether.

4. Avoiding photo and video tagging

It’s not difficult to prevent your boss from seeing that picture of you doing beer bongs. To prevent the tagged photo or video from showing up in his news feed, and the news feeds of other friends, go to the “profile privacy page.” Adjust the setting next to “photos tagged of you.” Select the “customize” option and choose the preferred option. Choose from “only me” and “none of my networks” if you want all tagged photos to remain private. If you want the photos to be visible to select users you can add their names to the box under the “some friends” option.

5. Protecting your albums

Choose which friends can see photos in a specific album by going to the “photos privacy page” and configuring the album’s visibility. You have to do this on an album by album basis.

6. Guarding your “relationship status”

For obvious reasons, posting your relationship status can be hazardous. But if you are determined to do so, remember to control how your status is displayed. For starters, you might want to consider taking this information off your news feed. You can do that by going to the “news feed and wall privacy page” and

un-checking the box next to “change relationship status.”

Also note, your relationship status is in your “basic information” section of your profile. You can modify this on the “profile privacy page.”

7. Preventing publication of application notifications

After installing an application, check your profile to ensure no embarrassing notification has been posted to your profile. Many applications publish stories about you without letting you know.

Some privacy advocates suggest avoiding applications altogether; when you install one the application can access some of your personal data.

8. Guarding your contact information

Pay attention to what you post in your contact information. If you include a lot of information here, don’t be surprised if you hear from people you don’t know. Make adjustments by going to the “info” tab in your profile and modifying “contact information.”

Each item in there (eg: phone number, email, etc) can have its own privacy settings. That way, your closest friends, and not the people you met last summer at Oktoberfest, will have your phone number.

9. Steering clear of embarrassing wall posts

To ensure your boss doesn’t read about your wild trip to Aruba, customize your wall postings visibility. Go to your profile page and click on the “settings” icon. Find the box in which you can adjust the setting that says “Who can see posts made by friends?”

Also, you can choose which friends will be able to post on your wall. Go to “profile privacy settings” page and find the section called “wall posts.” You can determine which, if any, if your friends can post on your wall.

10. Keeping your friends to yourself

By turning off your friends’ visibility, you ensure they are not contacted by people they don’t know – but who know you. Adjust your friends’ visibility by visiting the “profile privacy page.” Go to the setting that says “friends” and choose whichever setting you want.

With files from All FB, the Unofficial Facebook Resource