Facebook - controlling who sees your information

In this article we will look at how to set up your facebook account to ensure that others can only see the information that you want them to see.
So, most of the privacy settings are access from the Account link on the top right of your screen. Click Account, then Privacy Settings.

Privacy Settings for Sharing on Facebook

First of all, let's look at Sharing on Facebook. This section determines which bits of your information can be seen by other people, and who.


First of all, you will see an overview of what other people can see.  Assuming you personally know all of your facebook friends and contacts, I strongly recommend that you start out with Friends only,  with nothing set for Friends of Friends or for Everyone. You wouldn't go letting friends of friends, or everybody else, just wander round your house or look through your wallet, so you probably don't want them to do it on facebook either.
If you don't personally know or trust every single one of your facebook friends, then you will want some much tighter security than this. And you might want to think about why you have those people as friends on Facebook.

My default Privacy Sharing settings

So, to get it so that everything is set nice and private, click on Customize Settings.
In this screen you can set the privacy for each thing you do. You can even 'customise' each item to include or exclude specific individuals. I strongly recommend 'friends only' or only a limited subset of friends for almost everything, and that you do not include any networks.  Of particular importance are the following

• Contact Information (don't show your phone number) ,
• Places you Check Into (do you really want everyone in the area to know you're not at home?) and your Birthday.
• Include me in people here now after check in - I would UNTICK this box - this option, when ticked,  means that if you have 'checked in' to a location, anybody who arrives after you can see you are there and check in with you. Again, you might not want all and sundry to see where you are and with whom, and that your house is standing empty...
• Friends can check me in to places - click on edit settings, and set this to DISABLED. You don't want one of your friends announcing to all of their friends that your house is standing empty, do you?

As an example, this is how I have got mine set up - you can see everything is either 'Friends only' or 'only me'...


In the final section, Contact Information I have a number of different email addresses registered against my account. Most are visible to Only Me, and only one is visible to Friends Only. My Mobile Number is visible to Only Me. For obvious reasons, though, i'm not going to share a screenshot of that part of the page!

Privacy Settings for Connecting on Facebook

This section of privacy settings deals with how other people find you on facebook, and how other people who you have not accepted as friends can view your information.
First, click on Account -> Privacy Settings. Then in the section for "Connecting on Facebook" click on Edit Settings.
Assuming you have set your 'sharing on facebook' settings to be fairly private (Friends Only), then there's not much that non-friends can see. And this is the way you want it.
How you set up this page really depends on how easily you want to be found by friends (and that includes ex's, people you didn't like at school, and anyone else you really don't want to be 'rediscovered' by!).
They key to remember is that even if somebody 'finds' you on facebook, they can send a friend request, but they won't become your friend (and gain access to your wall and status updates) unless you actually Accept that friend request. You can always Reject a friend request from somebody you don't want to be friends with.

Determining which info is available to applications and software via FB

As well as other facebook users/people being able to see your information, there is a plethora of applications and games which will want to use and share your information, often without you realising.  For this reason, you should keep a close eye on your application settings.
Account -> Privacy Settings -> (down on the bottom left of the screen) Apps and Website -> Edit your settings

• Information accessible through your friends - I strongly suggest that you untick ALL of the boxes in this window, and don't let applications see ANY of your information via your friends.
• Apps you use - do a regular cull of any apps you don't regularly use - click on the x at the end fo the line and then on Remove and OK.
• Game and App activity - Friends Only. Unless you want your boss to be able to see how much time you spend playing games on facebook, of course.
• Instant Personalisation - a new thing and may not be enabled. But if it is, i'd untick it, at least until you fully understand the implications of ticking it. Basically, though, it seems to be letting FB allow third party websites to access your information. And you problably don't really want that.
• Public Search - Untick that box!  You don't want anybody who googles your name (from outside of facebook) to be able to see a preview of your profile, do you? After you've just spent all that time making your profile nice and secure and private?

In Summary...

If you only have real known-to-you friends as facebook friends (which i would recommend), then set everything as Friends Only.  If you have some untrustworthy, or not-personally-known-to-you contacts on facebook, then use the customize option and exclude those people. They won't know they are excluded, but it will keep your information save.
Or maybe you could consider whether you really want them as facebook friends.  If you decide that, actually, you'd rather not have this person as a facebook contact, then it's easy to remove them.  On the Profile page of each of your contacts/friends, there is a link at the bottom of the left hand column to unfriend that person - i.e. remove them from your friends.  Don't be afraid to use this!