Facebook users should review and adjust their privacy settings to limit the amount of personal information visible to others. Default settings are often too open, so it’s best to choose “Friends only”. Users should also limit personal information shared on their profile and stay up to date with changes to Facebook’s privacy policy.
While Facebook has a history of changing the way member account privacy settings work on its service, in many ways each member holds the key to ensuring their privacy on Facebook. To ensure your privacy, you should invest a few minutes of your time to review and, if necessary, change your privacy settings by logging into your Facebook account. These privacy settings are designed to control what information certain people can see, including friends, strangers, and advertisers. The best way to ensure Facebook’s privacy — and your privacy on any social networking site — is to limit the amount of information you list in the first place.
Reviewing your Facebook privacy settings is generally straightforward and usually only requires a mouse click to choose a setting for an item. The options to choose from are mostly contained in a drop-down menu for added convenience. You can choose to share any or all of your personal information with “Everyone”, “Friends of friends” or “Friends only”.
Facebook has set most privacy settings to Everyone or Friends of Friends by default. The Everyone setting can severely compromise your privacy on Facebook because this setting essentially allows Facebook to share your private information with everyone on the site. Making your information available to friends of friends can also be a big threat to your privacy because the number of friends of your friends, as well as friends of friends of your friends, is set to grow all the time. It’s often best, therefore, to make your personal information available only to your circle of friends to get Facebook’s best privacy guarantee.
Start reviewing your privacy settings with the status updates that are contained on the page you see as soon as you log into your account. The page contains snippets of information about you and your friends. It’s also where your friends post comments and other information on your wall; you may find this information sensitive and may want to make it available only to your friends. There’s a lock icon below your status update. Hover over the icon and left-click to open the menu and change settings.
Your next stop should be the privacy settings page which you can access via the “Account” hyperlink at the top right of the page. Click on it to open the menu and select “Privacy Settings” to enter the privacy settings page. The menu selection to change the settings appears in a box on the left side of the page. Clicking on any of the menu choices will make a global change in the setting of each item included in the privacy settings. If you’d rather choose your setting for each item individually, click the “Customize settings” hyperlink.
Changing your privacy settings should not be taken as a guarantee or complete guarantee that people other than your friends will not be able to access personal information that you wish to keep private. There are powerful search engines that can invade your Facebook account and display your information, regardless of your settings. Consider limiting the personal information you share through your wall and profile page. You may share more personal information at your discretion on a need-to-know basis via email or Facebook’s instant messaging facilities.
It’s also important to remember that the privacy policy on Facebook changes over time. As new features are added and as you add games and other applications to your profile, your privacy settings may change. You should stay up to date with any changes to Facebook’s privacy policy and regularly review your privacy settings to ensure you have the level of privacy you expect.
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