Facebook Privacy Settings Tips, Part 1

First and most important, not everything should go online. But if we still want to share, we don't have to share everything with everybody.
It is very important to always be aware of who has access to your information. A good rule is to try to periodically set aside a specific time of the month or week to go over your allowed apps and websites. If you don't use it, take away the authorizations!

Here are a few ways to share with your friends and still keep yourself some sense of privacy.
(Disclaimer: If it can be protected it can be hacked.)

Please. If you see that this post is missing information-- let me know and I will update it.

My first rule for privacy is to sort your friends to lists. For example:

Family
Work Friends
Ex Girlfriends
Friends from a former job
Etc.

These groups (called lists) are good for controlling all privacy settings, since Facebook lets you define who can see what according to lists. Under 'Privacy Settings' --> customize --> edit --> you can choose either to "make visible to" or "hide from" specific people, which includes lists.

Customize your Privacy
You can choose to share with friends, friends of friends, everyone, or customize. You should choose to customize it. The you can decide for every individual type of content (such as status updates, photos, etc.) who you are comfortable with seeing it (here those groups you made earlier really come in handy), and who to block, including specific people. I find that what I'm the most comfortable with is letting only (some) friends check out my photos, but letting friends of friends comment on my status. For you this might be the other way around.

The Basics
This is your name, gender, work place, etc.. You might want to let friends of your friends see that, or maybe its stuff you want to share with your friends only. Check whats right for you!

Remember that this is usually available for people searching for you on Facebook, and you may want people you actually know to be able to recognize you based on things such as:
Posts by me, Family, Relationships, Interested in and looking for, Bio and favorite quotations, Website, Religious and political views, Birthday, Places I check in to.

That's why I usually set the settings for things I know I'm already careful about posting to "Friend of Friends", assuming that almost anyone I would be interested in knowing on Facebook has at least one friend in common with me. So if we do have someone in common, you can get my basic info (note: special care should be used around "Posts by me", which depending on the nature of your status updates and wall posts might need to be on a more private setting).

It almost goes without saying that if you set your settings to "Friends of friends", anyone who is friends with one of your friends can then see all this content- not only the people you want to be able to see it. If you regularly post things which could actually offend someone or might reflect badly on you (at work, say, or when applying to schools or jobs), consider changing your settings for posts or pictures to only friends, if necessary blocking members of certain groups.

That was Part 1 of Privacy Settings Tips. in the coming parts I will include how to control things others share that relate to me, ways of communication also on the list, how to not found and how let anyone find you, Apps and websites and the Block List.