Guide to Controlling Your Privacy on Facebook

If you are like most users, you have probably never navigated to to your Privacy page before and the thought of taking the time to figure this out instead of checking out your friends pictures from last nights' party sounds incredibly dull. However, if you take the time now to set this page up right, your information will instantly be much safer and your experience with Facebook will be more enjoyable as a result.

To begin, notice that in the top right hand button on any Facebook page that says "Privacy". This is the area that you will need to master in order to maintain control of your privacy settings on Facebook. When you click on it, you will be faced with several options: Profile, Search, News Feed and Mini-Feed, and Applications. This page is the starting point for this tutorial. We will explore each section in detail and, where appropriate, I will explain the significance and make some specific recommendations for your settings.

The first step to protecting yourself on Facebook is protecting your profile. Your profile includes all kinds of personally identifiable information. It can include a name, picture, address, contact information, interests and activities, etc. If the wrong person has access to all these materials, it would not be difficult to befriend you in cyberspace and lure you into a trap or otherwise abuse your information.

The good news, however, is that Facebook has set up some great security measures to put you, the user, in control of who has access to your profile. Allow me to help you navigate your way through these controls.

From the main Privacy menu, click on the option marked "Profile". What follows is a long list of options. Under each category, you have several options to choose from: My Networks and Friends, People at [Specific Network] and Friends, Friends of Friends, Only Friends, and Customize. Also note that beside each category, there is a question mark icon. If you click on it, a short description of the category pops up. Take some time to look these over and choose a setting you feel comfortable with. Remember that even if you limit someone's ability to see your profile does not necessarily limit their ability to find you in a search. (That topic is covered in a later feature.)

While the settings you choose are entirely up to you, I would strongly encourage stricter settings for younger users especially if they are also female because this key demographic is highly targeted. This demographic also seems more likely to add lots of superfluous applications to their profile which might provide even more specific personal information. Personally, I have my settings set so that only my friends can view my profile, and I do not accept friend requests from random people I have no relationship with outside of the virtual realm. I think this is the best setting for me and I strongly recommend it for parents who face the privacy issue for their growing adolescents.

If you click on the "Search" button on the privacy menu, you will see several options including a Search Visibility drop down menu, an In Addition checklist and a list of Contact options.

First, choose an option under the Search Visibility. Who do you want to be able to find you on Facebook? This is a tricky question to answer and may depend on a number of things including how many networks you are in, how often you interact with people outside of the networks you are a member of, how active you are on Facebook, if you have any past contacts you do not want to find you, etc. For parents, I suggest that using either My Networks and Friends or My Networks and Friends of Friends are perfectly okay as long as you carefully choose the networks your child joins and you are careful about the next step. (*Read more about networks and privacy farther down.)

If you would like to increase the parameters of people able to find you in a search, you can do so in the checklist available directly under the Search Visibility drop down menu. This can be a great option if you are a student who often meets other students or you use Facebook to mingle with other business people. This is definitely a case-by-case decision and I cannot attempt to recommend the best setting here- it ultimately depends on how you want to utilize Facebook and your life circumstances. The next section, however, is incredibly important!

No matter how "visible" you have chosen to be in searches, choosing how people can contact you is the most important! It is here where you choose exactly what they see and can do to contact you when your name pops up in a search. This is another highly personal decision, but one that you definitely want to be making yourself instead of allowing Facebook default mode to pick for you!

The third section of your privacy control page is entitled "News Feed and Mini-Feed". When you log on, your home page shows the feeds of your friends and anyone else you have access to information from. This is often referred to as Stalker-Feed because if you do not carefully select your settings regarding this Facebook feature, you might be encouraging stalkers by feeding them information about where you are at any given moment in time and any other activity on Facebook. Thankfully, in response to millions of unhappy users, Facebook has developed this section to put you back in the driver's seat.

When you first enter the News Feed and Mini-Feed section of your Privacy control center, you are on a tab marked "Actions within Facebook". Here you will find a list of actions that may be included in a Feed. Any time you edit your profile, join a new network, or update your Facebook status, stories will be published to a Feed no matter what you choose here. Beyond that, however, you have lots of options. Think about what which actions you do or do not want your friends to read about. Personally, I think it's tacky to check the box marked "Leave a Group" because every time you leave a group, every one of your friends will know about it. Ultimately, however, these options are entirely up to you.

Next, click on the tab at the top marked "Actions on External Websites". This is especially important if you have allowed a computer to save your information to save you the headache of logging in every time you get on. If any websites have already tried to contact Facebook and create a story like this, it will appear on this page. If you want to prevent this from ever happening, click on the box next to the "Don't allow any websites to send stories from my profile".

The next tab is marked "Social Ads". This is very similar to the Actions on External Websites tab, only here Facebook is trying to pair the power of word of mouth with online advertisement to make some back-end money. The result? They want to take your actions and pair them with related advertisements and use them as what they refer to as "Social Ads". While this and the Actions on External Websites may appear to be generally harmless to the average user, I would strongly suggest opting out of them both! I say this for a number of privacy reasons which are well explained in the articles linked below:

Is Facebook Beacon a Privacy Nightmare?

Beacon Saga Comes to an End: Facebook Adds Global Opt-Out, Apologizes

Facebook's Beacon More Intrusive Than Previously Thought

The fourth and final section of your Facebook privacy panel is called "Applications". As the name implies, here is where you can control what info. is available to applications and, most importantly, to third-party application developers.

Upon clicking on this section of the privacy control panel, you will by default be on the tab marked "Authorized Applications". If you have in any way given authorization to applications to access your information, it will show up here. If you have already given applications this privilege, you can change or edit their accessibility to your information here.

On the next tab marked "Other Applications" is where you can control how much information about you is available on the Facebook Platform.

Allow me to step back just one minute here and discuss Applications a little bit. Applications are basically free add-ons or extensions that can do any number of things depending on how they are coded to run. In many ways, they offer the end user the ability to utilize Facebook with extreme individuality and unlimited ways of connecting and interacting with other users.

The Facebook Platform is a fancy name for the development area of Facebook where Application Developers create and promote their Facebook Applications. Anyone can create a Facebook App- even I have created one myself to promote my articles on Associated Content.

If you have ever tried to add an Application to your profile, you probably noticed that in order to add an Application, the only requirement is that you allow the Application Developer access to "your information". For a long time it was unclear exactly what kind and how much information was being offered, but not anymore. This tab labeled "Other Applications" explains that when you add an Application, you must allow them access to your name, networks, and list of friends. Additional information is optional, but is probably checked by default. To change your settings, simply update the list available on this tab and save the changes at the bottom of the screen.

Notice that towards the end of this page are two more sections. While they may not seem significant, they can be great tools. The first one is entitled "Blocked Applications". If you have any reason to doubt the credibility of an Application, I strongly suggest blocking it immediately. For a growing list of questionable Applications, refer to the list below. As time allows, the list, I'm sure, will grow and change and, as it does so, I will continue to update.

The last section on this tab is marked "Ignored Application Inviters" and is offered mostly because so many users demanded it be available. More than likely, if you have more than 30 friends on facebook, you have at least one or two who are addicted to Facebook Apps. (You can usually tell because every time you visit their profile, you have to weed through 10 more App boxes you never knew existed in search of the illustrious wall module to leave a simple "hey, howya doin?") Anyways, if they are the kind that also insist on sharing their newly beloved Apps with you, block their invites here! I know it might sound mean, but if you're just going to ignore them in the end anyways, why bother to wait until the invite comes? If at a later date, your friend cools it and realizes that there is life outside of Facebook, you can easily unblock them here as well.

While there are some basic parameters required for an individual, group, or business to develop an application on Facebook, as well as guidelines that Facebook asserts as how the personal information gathered should and should not be utilized, there is, unfortunately, no way to enforce these ideals. If at any time you add an application, the information you have allowed to be shared with the developers is transferred to their server. If they have a way of aggregating that info, they can keep their record of you even if you decide to remove the application. Still other applications are dangerous for the simple fact that they are in many ways inappropriate for children or possess some inherent element of danger. So, how do you know which applications are the ones to avoid and which ones are okay? It is impossible to evaluate and recommend or blacklist every application available, but if you are very careful in how you choose your privacy settings before you add any applications, and you are picky about the number and type of apps you allow access to your info, you should be alright.

Before adding an app, ask yourself 3 things:

1. How useful will this application really be to you?
   There are some apps that merely amuse you for about 15 minutes and then you will never touch it again. If you are bored and the quiz or game sounds fun, do a quick Google search to see if there is a free online version which does not require you to give access to your personal information in order to use. There are other apps that are designed for interaction, but if only two of your friends, who are more like random people you met at a party one night about five semesters ago, are the only people who have added it, do you think you'll really use it?
   
2. Who has put together this application?
   In the Application Directory, just below the title of the app is the name of the individual(s) or company that developed the game. If it's a company, run a quick online search to see if it's the type of company that you feel you can trust with your information. If it's a bunch of college students, it might be more difficult to look into the matter, but try anyways.
   
3. What are other people saying?
   While it is not always wise to base your decision solely on what other people experience, looking over the application reviews is not a bad idea at all. It will give you a pretty good idea of the applications quality, ease of use, etc., which might sway your decision on whether or not to add.

Ultimately, of course, the decision is all yours. The best you can do is be informed and make the best judgment call you can make. As technology progresses, the potential for danger naturally increases as well, but do not allow that to become afraid of the tools that it affords you.

Beyond customizing your privacy settings, there are lots of extra precautionary measures you can take which will protect you as you meet and interact with other people on Facebook.

Messaging
Opt for a personal message over a wall post. This will ensure that only the person you are sending the message to will be able to view it. Also, there is a slimmer chance of someone taking your comment out of context, which we will talk more about in just a minute.

Be Picky
If you don't recognize the person, don't add them as a friend. If you want to add an application, research the developer(s) a little. Use good judgment and don't be afraid to choose "Ignore" or "Reject". Remember that you are in control until you give that control away. Being picky helps you maintain control.

Be Aware of Your Web Presence
Avoid presenting yourself in a way that may encourage unnecessary and/or unwarranted attention (i.e. pictures, comments, etc.) Be who you are, but don't "tell all" in public venues like group discussions, a friend's wall, public notes, etc. A good rule of thumb is that if you wouldn't say it in front of your minister or grandmother, it probably doesn't need to be written in a "public" arena.

Play nice
While it is impossible for everyone to agree, it is entirely possible to not be rude about it. This may make you a target for cyber-bullying, which is a serious issue you do not want to provoke. Treat people with respect and dignity and they will most likely treat you well in return.

Think long-term
Don't just think about your Facebook account as a way to find out where the biggest party is this weekend- it is quickly becoming one of the hottest tools for job recruiters to use as well. One of these days an employer may use Facebook to "research" you unofficially, and comments like "Dude, I can't believe how wasted we were last night! I completely slept through my final and had to lie like hell to get out of it" probably won't land you the job!

Depending on what purpose you expect your facebook account to serve and what your privacy settings are, you may need to use caution in customizing your profile. If everyone across the internet can search for your profile, do you really think it's wise to also include your home address, an outline of your weekly schedule, and a list of all your worst fears along with some slightly promiscuous photos someone took of you at a party last week? Can you say target for a web-savvy serial killer?

Don't let my caution scare you from using facebook, but I use this extreme suggestion to make a point that you do need to be careful about what details of your life you choose to disclose on Facebook. Fill out and customize your profile with the idea in the back of your mind that your boss, grandmother, and religious leader will all be checking out your profile at some point, not just your crazy friends you love to do crazy stuff with on the weekends. As technology advances, employers are starting to refer to facebook accounts as a free form of a background check. They can see from your pictures and comments what type of lifestyle you lead. They can see from your profile what you do in your free time and get a better picture of your personality, which can be a huge asset when hiring. Give them reasons to hire you by planning now to be a desirable future employee!

It is so easy to read over the privacy issues covered on this lens and get the idea that Facebook is dangerous and not worth the headache. That is why I decided to add this section dedicated to celebrating the cool, safe stuff you can do on Facebook.

From it's inception in 2004, creator Mark Zukerburg and the team of Developers behind Facebook have made privacy one of their main concerns. They figure if it is important to you, the end user, then it should be important to them. Since then Facebook has grown to have more than 70 million active users!

Over the years, Facebook has had many user revolts. Every major upgrade has been met with some degree of unrest. While this may, at first, sound slightly disconcerting, it is necessary to note that with every new upgrade and user uprising, Facebook has responded quickly and efficiently. They have communicated their position and intent to the users and followed through. My point here is that if you feel unsafe in any way, talk to people on facebook, raise awareness, get people to agree and then "petition" Facebook. Users have been shaping this community since it first begun and if you see room for improvement, point it out and twist their arm a little.

Display your love for Facebook with this great gear. The profile cards are especially useful for handing out to new contacts so they can find you on Facebook. Just remember to make sure your privacy settings are set to allow them to search for you if you choose to hand them out!


Facebook T-shirt by cherangelry
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Facebook Quote T-Shirt by cherangelry
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Facebook - Skinny by ZazzleProfileCards
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I facebooked your mum by thuperdooper
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