A recent hot topic on Facebook is privacy. Everyone handles things differently – some have separate profiles for professional connections; some just avoid being open and transparent altogether. There are a lot of options to specify privacy on Facebook, and by utilizing them you can enhance your experience and still remain private and professional.
Friend lists are probably the most important. My friend recently ran through her list and I found it smart, yet humorous at the same time. It was something along the lines of – friends, professional, family, close friends and creepy. She then explained how people start in one category and can progress through the levels of privacy based on the development of their relationship. For instance, if someone “friends” her (yes, this is a verb now) she puts them in a low-visibility group such as professional. If they start to develop an actual friendship they may move to the friends category, but if they become a weirdo-stalker they will end up in the creepy category (or possibly blocked altogether) and see very little of what she shares.
With that said, this can take a lot of time to implement, but once you set up your friend lists they are very easy to manage. If you are on your Facebook “Home” page you can click “Friends” on the left-side navigation. You can then click the “Create a List” button on the top left. Then type the name of your list and start adding friends. Once they are in a list you can manage what they see through your privacy settings (click Account then Privacy Settings). Also, when you post you will have the option to select a customized list of those who can see your post or not.
Some other options for privacy are to block your profile from Google and Facebook searches, block photos and tags, keeping your contact information private and so on. In the beginning, Facebook had many of these settings as a default. They notify you once through a pop-up box when they change their default security settings, but you may have been in a hurry or misunderstood the message and not realized what you needed to do.
You would probably be surprised at how much of your profile is public. If you think you have all of your privacy settings the way you want, try having someone that is not your friend on Facebook (or ‘unfriend’ someone who is) and have them take a look at your profile as an outsider. Can they see your photos even though you thought they were blocked? If they request you as a friend, can they subsequently see your entire profile even though they have not been accepted as your friend? If you are worried about privacy it is extremely important to make sure you are protected.
Photos
Maybe you don’t usually care about privacy, but you are job searching, or maybe your grandmother wants to be your friend and you don’t want her to see “everything” you have out there. The biggest thing most people have issues with is photos. There are ways to block people from tagging you in photos, you can also remove your tags, and so on. When someone tags you in a photo it shows up on your wall and stays in the “Photos of <insert your first name here>” album. It is also perfectly acceptable to ask people to delete photos of you.
I had a recent experience with this. I had gone to a party, and my friend’s camera had an obnoxious flash that made me close my eyes half way in every picture. So, even though I was the designated driver and hadn’t had a drink – I looked wasted. My family and coworkers were all giving me a hard time the next week after my friend posted the pictures. I removed the tags and asked her to remove the pictures.
Overall, when it comes to social-media privacy you need to watch what you put out there (posts, pictures, notes, tweets, status updates, links, etc.) use common sense and keep and eye on what others are putting out there about you. It is okay to delete comments from your wall if they are inappropriate. On the same note, it is important to keep privacy in mind when you’re posting to other people’s walls or commenting – they may not want certain information put out there, and sometimes things taken out of context can be damaging.
Mary Grimborg
