How I Control My Privacy On Facebook
May 7, 2008
My friend Anna emailed me today asking if all of her “friends” on Facebook could view her wall. I gave her some tips about Facebook privacy that others might benefit from.
Here’s my response:
the short answer is yes, all of your friends can see it.
you can put access controls on each application and photo album that determine who can see what, but there’s a bit of effort involved.
you can either restrict at the person level (joe smith), or at the custom group level (old colleagues, high school friends, relatives). these are groups you create yourself and assign people into.
i find that two friend groups are sufficient for my privacy needs.
my two friend groups are: 1) “limited profile” and 2) everyone else. limited profile people are generally people who i don’t have close personal ties with, but who i may want to accept as friends (old classmates, colleagues, etc). they are therefore my “friends,” but can only view a subset of all the things in my profile.
for each application and photo album i want to restrict, i change the privacy settings to “all friends but not limited profile.”
voila! privacy exactly the way i want it.
some things i restrict from limited profile people:
-almost all photo albums
-basic info
-personal info
-photos tagged of me
-videos tagged of me
-friends
-wall
-education
-IM screen name
-email address
under Edit Profile | Basic, i selected “show only month & day in my profile”. this wasn’t the default when i first registered with facebook, though it should be. date of birth is a sensitive identity detail.
no one can view my land phone, mobile phone, or current address. in fact, there’s no data entered into these fields. most people who need this info already have it, and if they don’t, they can message me to get it.
i also do not allow people who search for me to see my friends. i don’t see any reason whatsoever why a random person on facebook should have access to all of my social contacts.
i’ve uninstalled almost every 3rd party application, so apps privacy isn’t really an issue for me, but you might want to put restrictions on your apps as well.
Posted in privacy, facebook, web2.0 
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