Facebook's privacy settings
are confusing by
design, often hiding similar settings in totally different menus and defaulting
to unnerving levels of public sharing. Ensuring that you share the right
information with the right people can be difficult, and Facebook even has a few
specialized settings that will override your other privacy settings if you
aren't careful. Luckily you can take control of your privacy on Facebook fairly
quickly once you know what you're looking for. To that end we've assembled this
quick guide to each part of Facebook's Privacy Settings page (accessible via
the menu that drops down when you select the downward arrow at the top right of
your Facebook page). Following it should help you get your Facebook information
locked down on the double. For each section of Facebook's privacy settings, we
provide a brief description of what to look for, along with notable settings
that you'll probably want to adjust. Click on any screenshot to zoom in for a
close look at the different privacy settings on display.
Default
Privacy
Your default privacy setting is the first thing
you'll see on your Privacy Settings page. It's also the most important item on
the page, since it controls who can and can't see content that you post
automatically. Facebook provides three options here: Public, which lets anyone
see your new posts; Friends, which limits access to your content to people whom
you've friended on Facebook; and Custom, which permits you to take a more
granular approach to your privacy settings.
Notable
settings: For many
users, the Friends privacy setting should be perfectly acceptable, but you may
want to experiment with Custom and familiarize yourself with the privacy
customization menu--it's the same one you'll see across all of Facebook's
privacy pages. You can configure the Custom setting to make posts visible to
specific people, to custom lists of people, or to any school/work networks that
you might be a part of. I set my default privacy setting to include friends of
my friends, though some users may consider that setting too open to sharing.
How You Connect
These settings, which control who can view
your personal information and who can contact you on Facebook, constitute what
most users think of as their Facebook privacy settings. Clearly they're among
the most important privacy controls on the site.
Notable
settings: All of
the settings in the How You Connect section are significant. They determine who
can send you a friend request on Facebook, who can message you on the service,
and who can see your Timeline. They also control who can see your email address
and phone number if you provide that data to Facebook. The settings are
structured to give you the same Public, Friends, or Custom options as does the
Default Privacy menu and most of them default either to 'Everyone' or to
'Friends of Friends', so you may want to configure them to be a little less
permissive.
Timeline and Tagging
Description: This menu contains the bulk of your Timeline settings, including specifications
for who can post on your timeline and who can see those posts. Bear in mind,
however, that the actual controls for viewing your Timeline appear in theHow You Connect section (see above).
Notable
settings: Though
the timeline settings are important, the two settings here that will be most
useful to users involve Facebook automation. The first controls Facebook's
unsettling facial recognition feature (added last year). To disable that
feature, set 'Who sees tag suggestions when photos that look like you are
uploaded?' to no one; if you go this
route, you and your friends will have to manually tag your face in photos. The
second setting lets you review firends' posts that you've been tagged in before
the posting is approved. If you've ever worried that an embarrassing and
clearly labeled photo might circulate on Facebook before you can detag it, set
'Review posts friends tag you in before they appear on your timeline' to enabled and worry no more.
Ads, Apps, and
Websites
Description: This section controls how
your Facebook profile and personal information interact with things outside
Facebook proper, including Facebook apps, personalized ads, and websites that use Facebook
data to customize your experience. It's also
where the truly Orwellian stuff lives; if you're worried about Facebook
destroying your privacy, head here first and turn pretty much everything off.
Notable
settings: Everything
here is worth scrutinizing, especially the 'Apps you use' control panel. Here
you can review and remove all of the third-party apps you've added to Facebook.
Be warned, however, that you must remove (and confirm removal) of each app
separately, unless you elect to delete them all, so the operation may take a
while to complete. In the Ads settings, you can turn off social ads and
preemptively opt out of having your data used in third-party advertising. This
section also lets you turn off Facebook "features" such as instant
personalization (which exports your personal data to partner websites) and
public search (which allows users whom you haven't friended to see your
timeline through search engines, even if you've set your Timeline to be visible
to friends only).
Limit the Audience for Past Posts
This section is an anomaly on the Privacy
Control page. Instead of popping up a new window of settings, Limit the
Audience for Past Posts generates a small pop-up box with text explaining that,
when you confirm that you want to limit the audience for your past posts,
Facebook will automatically set all posts in your timeline to be visible only
to friends. This will retroactively change the status of your previously public
timeline posts to friends-only.
Notable
settings: The Limit
Old Posts option is the only setting here (besides Cancel), but it's a doozy.
Facebook frames it as a kind of nuclear option, but for most people it's a
convenient timesaver. Unless you prefer to leave most of your timeline public,
activating this option and manually making a few posts public should take much
less time than managing the privacy settings for Timeline posts individually.
Blocked People and Apps
The Manage Blocking settings let you
selectively block Facebook apps and users from interacting with you. They range
from relatively benign settings that help deter an overzealous aunt from
inviting you to try Farmville (without offending anyone) to a full global block
to prevent abusive users from interacting with you in any way on Facebook.
These settings are unlikley to be of much use for you when you first establish
your privacy settings, but they may become more useful when friends or apps
start spamming your Facebook feed.
Notable
settings: The
'Block users' setting is a fantastic tool if you're being harassed on Facebook
and want to take care of the situation yourself. Preventing all interactions
with a threatening person through Facebook is easy (be sure to report the
harassment to Facebook as well); for most users, though, the less serious
settings will be more useful. For example, do you have a friend who asks you to
come to arts events every weekend? Simply enter the person's name in the Block
invites from field of
the 'Block event invites' setting, and Facebook will automatically block any
new event invitations from them. Similarly, adding a friend to your restricted
list will ensure that thenceforth the person will be able to see only your
public posts, effectively unfriending them without inviting any unpleasant
histrionics.
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