Yesterday, I introduced you to some of the privacy settings that you can use to control who sees your profile info in Facebook. Today I'm going to look at the Privacy Settings that govern other aspects of the site.

I'm going to start with the Search options, which help you control who can find you on Facebook and, when they do, what they see about you.

Click Settings > Privacy Settings in the top nav bar.

Click Search.

As with the profile settings we saw yesterday, you have a variety of options as to who can and can't find you in a search. (I've never actually understood the Only Friends in this context because, if you're already connected to these people, why do they need to look for you?)

The Search Result Content section lets you select what a person sees when they do find you. For example, if I checked off all five options, this is the search result that would come up.

Note: Even though I checked off "Pages I'm a fan of", for some reason they don't show up in the results.

It's completely up to you what you're comfortable sharing. I know some people don't like to put up their profile picture but I recommend doing so, especially if you have a very common name. Otherwise, it can be hard for people who search for you to know if that person is really you.

I don't include my Friend List, because I think it's weird that someone may not know anything about me but can see pictures of my friends. So I keep that unchecked, so the View Friends link doesn't show up in the result.

The Public Search Listing lets you choose whether you want your Facebook identity to show up if someone searches for you on Google or other search engines outside of Facebook. If so, it uses the same options as above in terms of what it displays. Click the "See Preview" link to see what others will see when they find you.

Click Settings > Privacy Settings > News Feed and Wall.

This page lets you control whether different activities you do on Facebook will be displayed in other people's News Feeds and Highlights (the list of items on THEIR home page) or on your Wall (the list of items on YOUR profile page).

I'm not going to go into each of these options because (I think) they're pretty self-explanatory. However, if you have a question about any specific items, please send me an e-mail and I'll respond to it here.

I do recommend, however, you look at the list of things that will never be published, just to set your mind at ease about certain things.

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

I also want to note the other tab on this page for Social Ads. I'm not going to go into a lengthy explanation here because it's a little complicated. But this is the feature that caused a HUGE outcry (and rightly so) when it was first implemented, because people were finding themselves endorsing certain products and services in ads on other people's pages. I highly recommend you select "No one" if it's not already. If you want to know more, check out this January 2008 article from Wired.com's Epicenter blog:

Facebook Ads Make You the Star—And You May Not Know It

Click Settings > Privacy Settings > Applications.

This page lists all the Facebook Applications you're using. These include the standard FB ones like Notes, Events, Photos, Groups, etc. as well as third-party ones such as Causes, Scrabble, various quizzes, and so on.

The settings for each of these will vary slightly from application to application and they also include settings that have nothing to do with privacy—for example, whether they appear on your profile, if they're bookmarked, etc.. So, again, I'm not going to go through them all. But the following screenshots show the different settings options for Photos just to give you an idea of what to expect. But again, if you have any specific questions, send them to me and I'll be happy to go into further detail.

Note: When the text says "publish a story," it means that it will display on your Wall and other people's News Feeds.

Well, that was another long post but I hope you found it helpful. I was hoping to also write one this week about synching Facebook with other social media, like blogs and Twitter, but didn't have a chance to get to that. I'll post that info next week.

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