How (and Why) to Set Your Facebook Privacy Settings
Facebook. Place that connects people. Or better to say, the place where you can find out everything about everyone. Where can we drive the line? How wise it is to share on Facebook? Is it really necessary to know everything about certain people? And how much we should share with others?
Most of us work or will work in the close future. I always believed that it’s important how your profile represents you between your director and co-workers. As we all want to show ourselves as serious people, commited to their work, it is important that public eye doesn’t get everything about you. This tutorial will help and guide you through how and why you should set your Facebook Privacy Settings.
Why Set Your Facebook Privacy Setting?
Reading one article on www.dailymail.co.uk, I found research that showed the following:
“Out of 2,000 over-18s a third wish they had kept personal details offline
One in 10 people have been in trouble after publicly moaning about work
More than one in 20 have missed out on a job because of online photographs
And three in 10 people admit they cringe about past status updates”
Even posts made a few years ago, when we didn’t think about how much it can affect us one day, can be potentially dangerous in the future. Today, many of employers are checking their future employees over the Facbook. They are trying to see and find out who they will hire. They also check if you are complaining about them, work or are you really on a place you said you will be. It is never a bad idea to be extra careful when it comes to Facebook.
Sharing the most personal things about yourself, statuses and photos, can be dangerous. Beside “horrible bosses”, maybe your friends also are not interested in knowing every single detail about you and your personal life. You never know how someone could use your photos and informations. In a negative way.
How to Set Your Facebook Privacy Settings?
Recently, Facebook represented a new Privacy Shortcuts for how to set your Settings.
In the first part of Privacy Settings is “Who can see my stuff” option. You can choose from three questions:
- Who can see your future posts?
- Options are: Public, Friends, Custom and Only Me.
- Review all your posts and things you are tagged in.
- Using Activity Log you can see all your posts, likes and things you’ve been tagged recently and in the past.
- Limit the audience for posts you’ve shared with friends of friends or Public.
- With this option you can limit the audience from seeing your old posts and tags. You also have an option to change individually the audience for your posts.
In the second part of Privacy Settings, you will find “Who can look me up” option. You can choose from three questions:
- Who can look you up using the email address or phone number you provided?
- Options are: Public, Friends of Friends and Friends.
- Who can look up your timline by your name?
- Options are: Public, Frineds of Friends and Friends.
- Do you want other search engines to link to your timeline?
- If you want other engines to link on your timeline first you have to set up who can look up your timeline by your name on Everyone. That is going to make it easier for other searching engines to link on your timeline in search results.
I hope this little tutorial will help you decide how and why to set your Facebook Privacy Settings. I noticed Facebook is not giving us as many options as before to set up our Privacy Settings. Still, that shouldn’t be a problem to set up things as you wish. And, do it as you think is the best for you. If you have children, make sure they are protecetd too.
Featured image: Mashable
