Your Facebook Privacy: Share what you want with who you want

On the news this week we saw an article talking about parents putting photos of their children and family on Facebook without really knowing who is seeing them.
In this article we’ll show you how to adjust the Facebook privacy settings on your Facebook account so you only share what you want with the people you want.
There are three places to set privacy on Facebook: the Privacy tab, your profile and your photo settings.

The Facebook Privacy Tab

Go to the Privacy Settings and Tools tab located by clicking the lock icon in the upper right corner and the clicking “See More Settings”.
Here you can change default settings on your posts under “Who can see my stuff?” You can choose to share things with Public (anyone whether you’re friends or not), Friends, Only Me or Custom. Using the Custom option allows you to share your posts with a previously defined list or if you want to share with everyone except a person or list.
Another option available to you is to change your settings for each update before you share it. To do this you click the grey button next to the blue Post button to customise.

Another feature that many people don’t know about is the capability to limit the audience for old posts. Let’s say you realise that you were posting publicly the entire time you’ve been on Facebook and you want to beef up your security, this is the way to do it.
Click the edit button next to Limit Old Posts button and they will only be available to friends and anyone who has already interacted with the post, including liking, commenting or being tagged in it. One thing to bear in mind is that once you’ve done this, you can’t undo this without going to each post individually to change the audience.
There are a few other things you may find useful to adjust further down on the page. You can choose who can send you a friend request and whether you want strict message filters in your inbox. You also have the ability to determine how people can look you up, including using your personal information to find you.

Facebook Profile Settings

Next on the list to check is your privacy settings on your Facebook profile. To do this click About on your profile to view your basic information. Here’ll you see several sections about your Work and Education, Places You’ve Lived, Contact and Basic Info and Family and Relationships.
Contained in each section is a number of items and each item has a privacy setting. Just click on the icon to the left of Edit and to the right of each segment, and decide who can see that information: public, friends, custom or a list.
You can customise each element of your profile so your privacy is in line with your comfort level. For example, you can choose whether you want it publicly known that you work for a certain company, you may want to hide your relationship status from certain groups of your friends or whether you want everyone to have to ask for your phone number.

Facebook Photo Settings

Lastly, adjust the privacy for your Facebook photo section. There are two ways to handle the audience setting for your photos: by the album and by each image. If you upload photos directly into an album, click the audience indicator on the bottom right side of the album to set privacy. For albums with images uploaded individually (like profile and cover photos), you must click each image and enter the privacy setting there.