A&L Enterprises Tech Line

Recently facebook changed some privacy settings – in a way I’m not sure will be best for everyone.  I was confronted all of a sudden with a new screen that asked me to confirm my settings for Facebook.  Fortunately I was able to retain my private settings as it gave me an option to keep my old settings – but my concern is that if you’ve never updated your settings it might default to “Everyone” – which means the Internet.

So I highly suggest that you update your settings in Facebook – while there are many excellent guides I’ll summarize here what I set my items to:

1.  From your facebook home or profile click on your “settings” option.

2.  Choose the “Privacy” option from your Account Settings (there’s actually a shortcut from the previous menu).

3. This will present you with a number of options related to privacy.  Let’s look at the Profile Information first.

4. Below is an actual screen shot of my settings – which I set to “Only Friends”. I would recommend that to everyone -  but you can also choose other options – such as friends of friends.

5.  Next let’s look at the Contact Privacy Settings.  Again I recommend “Only Friends” as a good settings for most items.  You might want to make “Add me as a Friend” as Everyone – otherwise it can only be friends of friends. I also have website set to everyone and “Send me a Message”.

6.  Now let’s look at the application settings – where things get interesting.  Applications are things like games, quizzes, birthday reminders, etc.  These affect privacy in very interesting ways – including your friend’s information.

7. I would recommend you you review the first option as it’s informative.  Now we’ll look at the 2nd one – what your friends can share about you.  This is really interesting – as if you don’t uncheck items then if your friend takes a quiz it can not only collect information about them but about you.  I have mine to only allow my birthdate and my website (which is already public). I would recommend the same – but you can choose which items to share (with the owners of those applications).

8. The next two items give the option to block applications and request from friends for those applications.

9. The next item to look at is your search settings – this controls who can search for you. I have mine set to “Friends of Friends” – but maybe I’m paranoid.  I also have the “Public Search Results” unchecked – but then again I don’t have much of anything set to “Everyone” in the first place for it to work against.

10. Finally the “Block List” allows you to enter people you want to well – block.

11. One Final Note – you can make a separate public “page” for a business, organization, etc. – to keep that separate from your personal information.

Related Links:

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/184090/facebook_privacy_changes_go_live_beware_of_everyone.html

http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/02/facebook-privacy/

« Free Wi-Fi at @McDonalds Soon To the cloud and back again (or do we trust the cloud?) »