One of the concerns a lot of people express when they've decided to join Facebook is about protecting their privacy. Kids don't want their parents to see their party pictures; employees don't want their bosses to read their not-always-flattering comments about their companies; teachers don't want their students to know about their personal lives.

This post is going to talk about a number of ways you can manage who sees what on Facebook. However, before showing these features, I want to emphasize that the most effective privacy filter is the one between your ears. No matter how many controls Facebook (or any other application provides) you should always keep one thing in mind:

If you don't want someone to know something about you, don't put it on the Internet!

No service can guarantee that your information won't be circulated. People who have permission to view your photos can download them and send them to other people. You can copy and paste postings into e-mails and onto blogs. Even if there were some kind of "no download" or "no copy" feature in place, if I can see something on my computer, I can take a screenshot of it and then do whatever I want with that. And that's not even including security flaws and hackers...

The point of the above is not to frighten people from using Facebook or other sites to share information. It's simply to provide a reminder that the only surefire way to make sure that something doesn't get shared with the "wrong" people is to not share it at all. (Kind of like the abstinence argument applied to technology...:)

Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I do want to explain how you can use the various privacy controls that Facebook offers, because they can help you manage who you're sharing information with, even though nothing is 100% foolproof.

Because there are so many different things you can apply privacy controls to, I'm breaking this information over two days. Today I'm just going to discuss the basic Profile settings and tomorrow I'll discuss the Search, News Feed and Wall, and Applications settings.

From the top nav bar, click Settings > Privacy Settings.

You'll be taken to a page that provides several different areas where you can apply privacy controls.

Note: This is also the page where you can completely block someone from seeing anything about you or communicating with you in any way. But if you're actually being harassed by someone, or if someone is using Facebook to spam you, you can also report that person to Facebook who can then disable his account altogether.

Click the Profile link.

This page will allow you to assign privacy controls to your basic information as well as images of you on the site.

This is an area where I think Facebook has done a pretty good job overall, in terms of allowing you to tailor your privacy settings re. who can see what. I also like the feature where you can type in a friend's name and you will see exactly how S/HE sees your profile. This way, you can double-check that you've applied the appropriate settings for that person.

I'm not going to go through each and every dropdown, but I will show you a few to demonstrate the various options available, and then you can go through the rest of them yourself to make whatever changes you'd like. If you're not clear on what a particular option is for, click the question mark beside it for an explanation.

Open the dropdown box beside Profile.

This setting defines who can see your Profile page at all. Everyone means everyone on Facebook the Internet. Only Friends are those people you're directly connected to. My Networks and Friends adds people in any of the school, work, or geographic networks you belong to. Friends of Friends are your direct connections plus their direct connections. So if you're a friend with John and John's a friend with Bob, but you're not a friend of Bob's, he would still be able to see your profile if you selected this option. We'll look at the Customize option shortly.

Note that there's no way to exclude anyone specific friends from seeing your profile. That makes sense, because if you didn't want her to see it at all, you probably wouldn't have added her as a friend in the first place.

Open the dropdown box beside Personal Info.

This setting controls who can see information like your interests and activities, etc. (Note that you don't have to provide that information in the first place if you don't want to.)

Select the Customize option.

This dialog box has the same options as the dropdown, plus some additional ones. For example, you can check off which, if any, of your networks you want to give access to.

This is also where you can exclude some of your friends from seeing this information.

To exclude an individual, simply type his name in the box. This is also a good use of the Friend Lists that I explained in yesterday's post. For example, you may be happy to have your close friends know all this information about you, but not your work colleagues. So you could create a Friend List called Colleagues and exclude the entire list from seeing your personal info.

The advantage of using Friend Lists in this case is that if you add someone to that list later, she will automatically have the same privacy settings as everyone else in the list. Otherwise, if you had typed in all your colleagues' names individually and then friended another colleague, that person wouldn't be subject to these restrictions.

Unfortunately, there's no option to say "Give permission ONLY to these people or these lists." So if you had a Friend List called Best Buds and they were the only ones you wanted to see this info, you would have to EXCLUDE everyone else except them, which can be a hassle if you have lots and lots of friends.

However, there is a workaround for this. You could create a Friend List called Everyone Except Best Buds and put all your friends in it except your closest ones, then exclude that list for this setting.

Note: Some categories do allow you to select people/lists to grant permission to (as opposed to denying permission to everyone else)—for example, the Education Info category.

I don't know why some categories have this and others don't. I just file that fact under "That's Facebook for you." :)

I'm not going to show you the dropdowns for each category, but there are just a few more things on this page that I want to explain because they may not be clear, especially if you're new to Facebook.

• Note that there's a separate tab on this page for your Contact Information (phone number, e-mail address, etc.), so you'll want to go there and make sure you've got those settings the way you want them as well.
• Where it says Photos Tagged of You (or videos), these are not photos that you've uploaded yourself. For example, I may upload a photo that has you in it and I can "tag" it by adding your name to it. (I can't add your name if you're not one of my Facebook friends.) So these categories allow you to set restrictions on images and videos that OTHER people have posted that have you in them. This category also has a setting for "Only Me" so you don't have to worry about somebody posting a really embarrassing picture of you and having it be "out there" for others to see.
• If you want to change the privacy settings for your own photo albums, click that text link.
  
  
• Your Wall is the area on your Profile page where everything you've posted is listed, including status lines, photos, links, notes, etc. So the dropdown list beside Wall Posts lets you control who sees whatever appears there. Update: 05/07/09: This dropdown box doesn't let you prevent people from seeing your own Wall Posts—only those made by your other friends. For more information on how to prevent them from seeing YOUR posts, check my new entry, Huge Correction re. Facebook Wall Privacy.

  The checkbox above the dropdown box is to allow other people to post messages to your Wall. If you check that, their messages will be subject to the privacy controls you set in the dropdown box. Update 070109: I just recently discovered that if you prevent someone from seeing Wall posts from your friends, it automatically prevents that person from being able to write on your Wall as well.

Note: If you do customize any of these settings, make sure you click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the Profile Privacy page to make them take effect.

I realize that this is a lot of information to absorb but it is important that you understand what you can/can't control in terms of who sees what on your profile. If there's anything you didn't understand about the above or you have other related questions, please don't hesitate to send me an e-mail so I can further clarify a point.

*****

Updates

After posting this entry this morning, I realized I was missing some important information regarding controlling permissions based on networks you belong to. That was because I didn't belong to any networks, so those options weren't appearing in my dropdown lists and dialog boxes. However, I did join one so I could add that information and I've updated the relevant sections and screenshots above.

Sorry for any confusion!

Posted in Facebook, How To, Privacy/Security, Social Media