With over 1 billion active users per month, you never know just who is looking at your Facebook profile. And with Facebook’s new feature “Graph Search” it makes it even easier and quicker to browse through all of the information on you profile. So I’ll be giving you a few tips on how to keep your social life between you and your friends.
To start off with, if you click on the tiny cog wheel in the upper right-hand part of you screen it brings up a drop down menu. Go ahead and click on privacy settings.
You should see “Privacy Settings and Tools” and under that “Who can see my stuff.”
Who can see my stuff?
Lower on the page are three sub categories:
Who can see my future posts?
This decides who can see any posts you make in the future. You can set it to:
“Public” which would let anyone in the world on facebook see it
“Friends” which means that only people you have added as friends on facebook can see your future posts
“Me” which means only you can see your posts
“Custom” which lets only specific friends see posts or you can make groups
Reveiw all your posts and things you’re tagged in
In this section you can review any activity that is associated with you facebook profile. This ranges from liking photos, statuses, and pictures to adding new friends
Who can look me up?
The first subcategory limits who can look you up with your email or phone number. Setting this to “everyone” means that anyone with your email linked to the facebook account or anyone with your phone number can search it in facebook and it will bring up your account. Setting this to friends of friends means that in order for someone to look you up they would already have to be a friend of a friend on facebook.
The next subcategory limits whether or not you can be looked up on a search engine, such as Google.
Over in the far left column you should see Timeline and Tagging.
Who can add things to my timeline?
Who can post on your timeline
The subcategory of the top section limits who can post on your timeline or you profile page. This should be set to Friends.
Review posts friends tag you in before they appear on your timeline
The bottom subcategory lets you choose whether you want to review what people post on your timeline. So if Joe Schmoe decides to post pictures from a party 3 years ago you can let it post on your timeline or deny it.
Who can see things on my timeline?
Review what other people see on your timeline
In the second section you can do a quick preview of who can see your profile, you can set it to public or a specific person and see your profile through their eyes.
The next two subcategories go together and should be set to the same setting
Who can see posts you’ve been tagged in on your timeline
and
Who can see what others post on your timeline
These two subcategories let you limit who can see what others tag you in and post on your timeline, so mainly when someone interacts with you on facebook. I set this to Friends of Friends.
How can I manage tags people add and tagging suggestions?
Review tags people add to your own posts before the tags appear on Facebook
The third section relates to being tagged in posts. It is one of the best features in the privacy settings as it will notify you when you are tagged in a picture and you have to accept or deny the tag before it is posted for everyone to see.
When you are tagged in a post who do you want to add to the audience if they aren’t already in it?
The second subcategory decides who can see pictures/ when you are tagged in them. I recommend to set this to Friends.
Who sees tag suggestions when photos that look like you are uploaded
The final option when you upload a picture that looks like someone, facebook will recognize them and suggest you tag them in it.