So Many Privacy Settings, So Little Time

Now let’s go back to the Account menu in the top right corner of the screen and select Privacy Settings from the submenu. You’ll then be presented with six sections to control how your information is presented. Let’s select the first one, Personal Information and Posts.

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Once inside, you’ll be greeted by nine options that control how most of your key personal data is presented. For all but two of these, you can choose to display the data to Everyone, Friends of Friends, Only Friends or Customize. First, let’s take a look at what each option does.

“Everyone” should be fairly obvious: Anything with that option selected is exposed to the world, both within Facebook and beyond (more on that in a moment). In general, you’d be wise to use the Everyone option sparingly, especially with personal details such as who you’re interested in or looking for and maybe even your religious and political views, since those tend to be hot topics in today’s world. Keep in mind that many potential employers are turning to sites like Facebook to see what you’re really like -- by choosing “Everyone,” you’re potentially letting these people see your deepest, darkest secrets (assuming you choose to share them in such a public forum to begin with). However, there are a few settings where you want to keep Everyone selected, such as enabling potential new friends to find you in the first place, which we’ll get into shortly.

“Friends of Friends” gives both your friends and anyone they might be friends with the ability to see your data -- not really a big deal since in many cases, you likely have many of the same pals as your friends. But if you and your friends share a mutual acquaintance that they love and you don’t particularly care for, this setting is not for you -- it will give that unwelcome non-friend the opportunity to peek into your Facebook world. We’d say play it safe, and also use this option sparingly.

“Only Friends” is the easiest choice to make -- it allows you to control what people see based on who you allow to be your Facebook friend in the first place. As long as you’re particular about who you allow into your close circle of Facebook friends, this may be the only privacy setting you need. After all, if one of your friends should “go rogue” in the future, you can block (or even defriend) them to shut them out of your social loop as quickly as you let them in.

“Customize” gives power users of Facebook a lot more flexibility than the other settings. In addition to the first three options, you can choose to make certain sections visible only to specific friends or even only to yourself; likewise, you can also hide certain functions from specific people, simply by entering their name or even the name of a friend list, if you want to block out a whole group of people.

Finally, you may have noticed in the upper right section of the Privacy Settings there is a button marked “Preview My Profile.” At any time, you can click this to display your profile with your current settings and see how non-friends will view your page. You can even type the name of specific users -- if you’ve done any customized privacy selections -- to view your page the way they’ll be able to see it.

Personal Information and Posts

Now that you understand what each setting does, let’s take a look at the sections one at a time.



“Bio and Quotations” covers your biographical information in the About Me section of your page, including any favorite quotes you may have entered there. “Birthday” is exactly that, your birth date and year. “Interested In and Looking For” allows others to see what your intentions are for using Facebook: Are you just looking for friends, business colleagues or maybe a new lover? “Religious and Political Views” will show whatever options you have selected there, which many people might consider private and choose to withhold from the public.

The Photo Albums privacy settings are a little more complicated--click on Edit Settings and you’ll see a list of all your photo albums, with individual privacy options for each one. For instance, you might want to share photos of your recent vacation with the world, but another album with photos of your wife giving birth to your new baby might be saved only for your true friends and family. Make your choices and then click on the Privacy link at the top to return to the main six options.

Now let’s go back into Personal Information and Posts and look at the remaining choices. “Posts by Me” gives you control over how your status updates, links, notes, photos and videos are displayed to the world -- biographical data aside, these are likely to reveal your true self to the world, so choose your privacy setting wisely here.

The next option, “Allow friends to post on my Wall” is simply an on or off setting: By default, your friends are allowed to post stuff on your Wall. If you don’t want this, uncheck the box on the right side.

The last two options here control “Posts by Friends” and “Comments on Posts.” The former option simply gives you control over who can see posts that you have allowed friends to make on your profile, while the latter does the same for any comments that friends have made on posts that you create. If your friends tend to be vulgar or make comments you wouldn’t want your family to see, you might want to adjust these privacy settings accordingly.

Contact Information

Let’s go back to the main Privacy Settings by clicking “Back to Privacy,” which commits your choices (you always have the option to go back later and revise them). The next section is Contact Information, so let’s go there now.



This section controls how other users can view the various methods of contacting you outside of Facebook, including IM Screen Name, Mobile Phone, Other Phone, Current Address, Website and any e-mail addresses you’ve added to the service (we’ve blurred out ours in the above screenshot). You always have the option of excluding most of this information to begin with, in which case these privacy settings don’t really matter. Unless your list of Facebook friends are truly people you know personally, we’d advise caution with these settings -- this is the stuff that stalker types would consider a goldmine, after all.

As we mentioned earlier, there are two options on this page where you probably will want to use the default “Everyone” setting. “Add me as a friend” allows any and all to find you in a Facebook search, using whatever information from your profile that you have allowed to be public. If you change this from the default setting, it’s likely you’ll never get any friend requests, because no one will be able to find you on the site.

Finally, “Send me a message” controls who can actually send you a message through Facebook’s service. There’s not much reason to change the default “Everyone” setting, since you can always block (or even tag as spam) any unwanted messages through the service, and you’re not revealing any private data such as your personal e-mail address. But if you really want to only be contacted by friends (or friends of friends), feel free to change this setting to suit your needs.

Next page: Friends, Tags and Connections