Facebook-How to set Facebook privacy settings

Facebook is a great online social community website, but let's "face" it - putting a profile out on the internet for everyone and their brother to look at could lead to an invasion of your privacy and also could allow people that you do not want looking at your profile access to view what they want. In order to restrict what or who can view your Facebook profile, you can set up a lot of different privacy settings - ensuring that your profile is only seen by those you want to access it. Here is how you set up your privacy settings for your Facebook account.

Instructions

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When you first establish a Facebook account, by default, your profile is open to the entire internet community to view and interact with. Facebook is an online social networking community after all so there are little to no restrictions on most profiles when you first set them up. This is not a problem for most people at first, but as you begin to expand your list of friends, join groups, and interact with others on Facebook, you will begin to get spammed or you will get requests from people that you do not know or may not even like. There is also the danger of people you do not want knowing anything about you accessing your account and viewing your photos and contact information.

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So once you establish a Facebook account, you will want to take the steps necessary to help protect your profile, photos, and information. I highly recommend that anyone who has a Facebook account follows these steps, as unwanted access to your account could be very detrimental to your personal life - outside of the online community.

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Facebook Settings Drop Down Options

Log into your Facebook account, and take a look at the top blue navigation bar next to the "Search" box. Immediately next to the "Logout" link is a "Settings" link. Mouse over this link (DO NOT CLICK IT) to get three drop down options. (see image for reference)

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Facebook Privacy Settings Option

When you mouse over the "Settings" link, three drop down options appear. You should see
1) Account Settings
2) Privacy Settings
3) Application Settings

You will want to click on "Privacy Settings"

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Facebook Privacy Settings Page

Once you have clicked on the Facebook "Privacy Settings" option, a new menu will open up. See image for reference.

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On the Facebook Privacy Settings Page, you can configure 5 main aspects of your profile. These items are:
1) Profile Access/Permissions
2) Search Access/Permissions
3) News Feed and Wall Access/Permissions
4) Application Access/Permissions
5) Block People

I recommend that the first action item you take is to change the settings for your profile access. You can do the other 4 at a later time, but the profile settings are the most important to configure.

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The first thing we will do is go into the Facebook Profile Tab and set up who can see our profile information on our profile page. Click on the Profile icon on the page to open this menu.

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Facebook Profile Privacy Settings

Now we are on the Facebook Profile settings page. You will notice that there are several drop-down options available for you to configure on your account. The drop down options control who will have access to your account. So for example, if you take a look at the Profile option on the page and click the drop-down menu associated with the Profile option, you will see that you can change the access of your Profile to be viewed by "everyone", "My Networks and Friends", "Friends of Friends", "Only Friends", or you can "Customize" a list. See the image for reference. As you can see, I have set my Profile access to be seen by "Only Friends". I have actually set this same level for all of the options on my Facebook account to make sure that only people I know and have accepted can see anything about me.

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You can then go through each of the options and adjust the level of security that you are most comfortable with setting up.

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CUSTOMIZE: There is also an option to Customize the level of permission allowed for each of the privacy setting options on the page. For example, I am part of the Facebook Online Gaming Community that plays Mafia Wars. Since I only participate with the players of this game through the game and I make these friends through the game, I created a "MafiaWars Friends List" and I add these people only to that Friends List. (See link below to see how to make a Friends List). Making a Friends List is very helpful because you can categorize your Friends or Groups on Facebook and then configure the level of access you want them to have to your profile. In this case, I do not want any of my "MafiaWars" friends to have access to my profile so I have set the customized options that they can not see any of my basic info in the example attached to this step (see image).

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Once you have set up the permissions that you want for each of the Profile options on the main Facebook Profile Privacy Settings Page, click the "Save Changes" button at the bottom of the screen. To make sure that your changes were saved appropriately, you can actually check and see how other Facebook members can see your profile by using the "See how a friend sees your profile" option on the Profile Privacy page at the top by typing in a Friends name from you list. When you do this and click enter, Facebook will show you how your friends or groups see your page based on your permissions. (see image).

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Now you can go through the other options on the "Privacy Settings" main page and set them up the same way. Taking these extra steps will ensure that your Facebook profile is safe and secure and that only the people you want viewing and accessing your profile information can get to it.

Posted in: Facebook