Facebook Privacy Settings.

I want to use this post to talk about a topic which has been coming up a lot recently: Privacy on the internet, and particularly on Facebook. In today's world almost everyone has a Facebook account, which is sometimes used as a character reference when trying to get a job or into a college--and certainly a date! In short, your profile page maybe subject to a search, and most people, even those who are careful about what content they post, don't always want anyone to be able to find them or see what they posted. Some of my friends, particularly those looking for jobs or applying to schools, have taken very drastic measures to protect their privacy, such as changing their last name, or disabling their profile every time they log off of Facebook. While these actions do get the job done, in many ways it's overkill, since there are a number of simpler ways to protect or hide yourself using your privacy settings on Facebook.

While Facebook really does hold plenty of personal information, which is particularly problematic because most of it can definitively be linked back to you, since you use your real name, they also give us some tools to control the information. For example, you can choose not to show up on searches done by anyone who is not your friend or a friend of one of your friends, or you can choose not to show up in searches at all.

What I find most upsetting is that while technically we are provided with these options, Facebook seems extremely reluctant to let us know about them in a clear and straightforward manner. Whether or not this is intentional, or simply an oversight or poor design on their part, has been the subject of much speculation recently and there is no clear answer.

However, as things stand, I believe it is important that every Facebook user is aware of their options regarding privacy, and should take advantage of the privacy settings. Most important is to check your settings every once in a while, because Facebook is known for regularly making changes to their site which affects all users without giving them a choice on the matter. So in addition to visible changes to your personal profile and news feed, etc, they also often make changes to the privacy settings, which you as a user may not know about if you don't check it regularly.


Facebook Privacy Settings Tips
Part I