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3 Key privacy settings in Facebook you should care about

Facebook is now the social networking norm and everyone connecting to internet is on Facebook or soon will get on it. No big deal with having a Facebook account and actively using it daily. Kids start Facebook at 13 (officially) and will go till you are alive. It's going to capture all your life events and map it in its timeline.

You are one of those Facebook users who share things, who over-share or under-share. But you do share! If you don’t then your friends share info about you by means of tagging. Ultimately there is info about you shared directly or indirectly.

There is ton of info that can be shared and people do share it without a second thought. And this gets into Facebook permanently(even if you delete your account).  This info can then be used by public/friends and is no more private.

Knowing that you will hold Facebook account for lifetime, it's important to review privacy settings and manage who can see your shared info. Here are the key privacy settings that you should set

1. Who can see my stuff? 

Manage who can see all that you post on Facebook with this settings. Mark it to 'Friends' only when you share instead of public. Facebook also allows you to control this settings per post that you share so keep a close eye on what you are sharing and whom do you wish that to be seen. Do review your existing post for friends/public sharing.

Facebook > Settings > Privacy


Review sharing option when you are about to post your new photo or status


2. Manage photos that your friends tag you in:

Photo tagging feature is great. It lets your friends tag you in photos they share. Good thing Facebook does is that it lets you control your photos before it gets to anyone. You can get selectively in adding photos to your timeline even though your friends shared those publicly. Each photo a friend shares of you can be allowed/hidden by you before it gets seen by anyone. Unless you allow, no one will see those or appear in any search results by your friends.



3. Review how others see your timeline:

Facebook provides mechanism for you to see how others (public/friends) see your profile. It is very useful to know how your profile/timeline looks when third-party or your friends see it. It will help you hide few things or promote few things in case you missed category.





Hope this helps to keep your private info with your friends rather than making it public. Do post in for your comments below.

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