Facebook Privacy Settings

This guide will help you choose optimum Facebook privacy settings for your needs. Facebook and privacy advocates have been at the opposite ends of the spectrum since their basic interests differ. The more of your personal information that Facebook can share with advertisers the more the advertisers are will pay for advertising on Facebook.

Before we go any further, we have a recommendation to make which many will find surprising. If there are parts of your life that you absolutely must keep private, do not have a Facebook account. There are just too many ways for information to leak from your Facebook account to guarantee privacy.

The first step in guarding your privacy on Facebook is to make sure that your Facebook account is secure. This Facebook security primer helps you take the most important steps.

Put in the minimum information in you Facebook profile. In particular try not to put in your full birth date, names of your children and any vacation plans.

Since any of your friends has access to your personal data your privacy are as privacy depends on the weakest link in your network. If one of your friends behaves irresponsibly clicking on obvious scam app links, your privacy may be at risk. Your choices are educating your friend on safe behavior or unfriending him or her.

You can group your friends into lists and allow different lists of friends differing access to photographs and other information you post online. You don't want your boss to see the risque photos you took with another group of friends do you, do you? You can access the "Create a List" button by going to to "Edit Friends" page on your Facebook profile.

Facebook Privacy Settings options

You can access your privacy settings from the Account drop down in the top right hand corner.

The first option is to change the default access for material you upload from devices like iPhone. Change it to Friends or Custom, else it will accessible to strangers.

Stop people from putting inappropriate messages on your wall that are visible to all In "How you connect" settings changes "Who can post on your wall" and "Who can see wall posts by others" to "Only me"

Stop people from tagging you in embarrassing photographs and making tags visible to all

Keep your relationships private You have a few options here - the first is to not set your relationship status, that way when it changes, you friends will not get notified of it. Another way is to delete the wall post about your relationship status changing as soon as it appears.

Stop your Facebook profile from being visible from search engines Go to "Apps, games and website" and turn off visibility to public search engines.

Facebook Privacy Settings Tools

Reclaim Privacy is a tool by Electronic Freedom Foundation that will scan your privacy settings.

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