UPDATED: A Guide to Understanding Facebook’s New Privacy Settings

UPDATE

-

Check Step 8 at the bottom of the post to learn how to make sure nobody can see your Friends List.

–

Since unveiling its new and “improved” privacy controls, Facebook has drawn a lot of criticism. By far, the biggest complaint lodged against the company is that, under the guise of offering users more protection, Facebook actually exposed user information by defaulting privacy settings to public sharing. Because of this, many users accidentally shared pictures, links, and wall posts that would have otherwise been kept among their Facebook friends. Even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg seemed taken by surprise with the new default settings, accidentally allowing his private albums to be exposed to the world.  (Zuckerberg has since claimed that he opened up the photo albums on purpose, which begs the question, why are they still not publicly available?)

In any case, now that Facebook has worked out the majority of the kinks in their privacy controls (though not all), we thought it would be a good time to walk users through the process of protecting their Facebook profile from the world. Using my own personal Facebook account as an example, check below to learn how to make sure your Facebook profile is seen only by the people whom you want to see it.

–

Step 1: Find Your Privacy Settings

The first step in adjusting your privacy settings is to find them. Luckily, this part of Facebook hasn’t changed. When you log into your account, go to the upper right-hand corner of your profile and hover on the settings tab. A list of options will drop down, including account settings, privacy settings, and application settings. Click on privacy settings.

Step 2: Learning What Does What

From this part of your account, you will be able to control who can see your profile (Search), whether or not they can contact you (Contact Information), what they can see in your profile (Profile Information), and how much of your information is exposed to Facebook applications (Applications and Websites). You can also manage your Block List, which allows you to cut all communications with someone on Facebook.

Step 3: Limit Your Profile Information

From the previous page, click on “Profile Information.” Now, you should be seeing a page that looks like the one below. From here, you can adjust who can see certain elements of your profile with a very high level of control. As you can see from my settings, all of my profile information is only accessible to my friends. For maximum privacy, we recommend using this option.

However, as we all know, there are friends and then there are “friends.” Do you really want to share the same information with your college buddies as you do with your boss? If there is someone in your Facebook network whom you don’t think should see your personal info, scroll over to the drop-down menu and select the “custom” option. Using the custom option, you can select specific friends to hide information from.

Step 4: Adjust Who Can Find You

From a business perspective, I understand why Facebook defaulted user settings to be more public. Despite the fact that it has 350 million users, it’s been difficult for Facebook to effectively monetize its website because so much of it is closed off from Google and other search engines. In order to compete with hard-charging public social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook needs to have more information accessible for indexing (and consequently for advertising).

Of course, Facebook’s business strategies don’t mean squat to the good majority of Facebook users, which is why so many people were upset when they saw that some of their information was now accessible to everyone. Luckily, Facebook has made it easy to undo this gross oversight. From your main privacy settings, click on “Search.” From here you will see this screen.

If the box marked allow indexing is selected, click on it to unselect it. Conversely, if you want a limited version of your profile to be accessible in Google, you can click the allow indexing box, but you should make sure that everything you don’t want seen is set to “Friends Only.”

Step 5: Adjust Who Can Contact You

Facebook is great for connecting with friends and family, but that doesn’t mean you want everyone to know how to stay in touch with you. To adjust your contact settings, return to the main privacy settings page and choose “Contact Information.” From here, you will see a screen like the one below.

As you can see, this page allows you to control who can add you as a friend or send you a message. If you’re using Facebook for business networking, it is probably okay to leave this option open to everyone. This way, if someone sees your limited profile via a friend’s profile, they can ask you for more information. At that point, you can make an informed decision about whether to add them as a friend. If you choose to de-index your profile from Google search results, the only way someone will be able to find your profile is through a mutual friend anyway.

Step 6: Find Out What You’ve Shared With Your Applications

Without a doubt, the weakest point of Facebook security is third-party applications. As demonstrated yesterday by the hacking of RockYou, companies that develop third-party applications for the major social networks are not infallible to attack. Despite this fact, however, many Facebook users fail to comprehend how much information they allow companies to take when they install a seemingly harmless game like Mafia Wars of Farmville.

To learn how much information you might be sharing with third-party companies, visit the Applications and Websites section of your privacy controls. Initially, you will see a screen like the one below.

From here, click the learn more tab next to “What you share.” The next screen will look like this. It is essentially an explanation of how applications work on Facebook and the kind of information that they may request. At the bottom of the screen, you can click a link to see what applications you have authorized.

I don’t use Facebook to play games or take quizzes, so my applications list is pretty bare (as you can see below). Nevertheless, I checked through all of my settings anyway to adjust them.

Surprisingly, when I opened up my links application I saw that the default setting was everyone. I don’t know if it’s always been that way or if it was defaulted by the Facebook changeover (I’m assuming the latter), but I made a quick adjustment and now (as you can see from the picture), my default setting for sharing links is “Friends Only.”

Step 7: Control What Your Friends Can Share About You

Finally, we’ve reached the last piece of the puzzle. When it comes to applications, you don’t just have to worry about what you’re sharing with third-parties, but what your friends are sharing with third-parties about you. If you go back to the “Applications and Websites” page (seen below), you will see the option “What your friend can share about you.” Click on edit settings.

You should now be looking at a screen like this with a whole bunch of boxes. If any of the boxes are checked, that means a third-party application downloaded by your friend (but not by you) will be able to see that part of your profile. We recommend unchecking all of these boxes to limit third-party data mining.

–

Step 8: Remove Your Friends List

One of the big criticisms about Facebook’s privacy settings switch was how it defaulted to publicly showing a selection of your Friend’s List. Obviously, some Facebook users didn’t want strangers to see who their friends were, especially business people who don’t necessarily want their competitors to see their possible clients and parents who were worried about accidentally exposing their kids profiles. Luckily, in response to the criticism, Facebook allowed users to change this option, but not without a little bit of searching.

Unlike all of the other controls I’ve outlined, you cannot remove your friends list from the Privacy Settings page. To make sure nobody sees your friend list, you have to first go to your profile page. You probably know how to do this (you wouldn’t be much good on Facebook if you didn’t), but here’s a visual. To access your profile, click on the “Profile” button at the top of the page when you log-in.

Once you are looking at your profile page, scroll down to your Friends list. You will see a pencil icon in the top right corner of your Friends list box. When you click the pencil, you will see a pop-up screen that looks like this.

If you want to make sure nobody can see your Friends list, make sure to uncheck the box marked “Show Friend List to Everyone.” By unchecking the box, you will prevent anyone besides your friends from seeing who you are connected with on Facebook.

–

If you have any questions about these privacy settings, or would like more information about how you can control your private information on the web, please do not hesitate to contact us.