Facebook privacy settings have undergone several changes since December 2009, the latest one being in August 2011. Since your Facebook profile is associated with your real name you may want to keep more information private. And while you can always make parts or all of your profile private again, once information has been released to the Internet (e.g. search engines), This post will guide you on how you can control your privacy settings as of the August 2011 update, which was designed to be more user-friendly.
#1 Change the privacy settings for any old posts.
Before August 2011, you could not change the visibility of any posts that had already been published. If you accidentally made it too public, all you could do was delete it. Now there are two ways to adjust the visibility of old posts.
*To change the settings for an individual old post, find it on your wall, and hover the cursor on the upper right hand corner until a menu icon pops up. Click on that and change the visibility the same way as you would for a new post.
*To change the settings for all of your old posts, click on "Account" from the upper right hand corner and choose "Privacy Settings". Look for "Limit the audience for past posts" and click on the "Manage Past Post Visibility" link next to it. A dialog will pop up reminding you that this will set the visibility of all of your old posts to friends only. A few things to keep in mind: This is good if all of your old posts are more public than "friends only", such as if they were shared with everyone or with friends of friends, but it may also make private old posts (such as those which you shared with only certain friends) visible to all of your Facebook friends. Also, if you change your mind later, you'll have to individually go back and change each post's privacy settings, which can be unrealistically time-consuming.
#2 Check the visibility of any post that you comment on.
* If you comment on someone's post and they have set it to be visible to friends of friends or public, that means your comment might show up in all your friends' feeds.Before August 2011, you had no idea how public a person's update was, but now you can check by hovering the cursor over a little symbol at the end of the date details for an update:
* If it says "Shared with: (Name)'s friends of friends" or if the symbol looks like the Earth, that means all of your friends will be able to see your reply to that post.
#3 Take control of your tags.
The August 2011 update gives you more options to decide who sees posts, photos and videos you've been tagged in. Click on "Account" from the upper right hand corner and choose "Privacy Settings". Look for "How Tags Work" and click on "Edit Settings" next to it.
- Consider turning on profile review. If profile review is on, you must approve tags before they will appear on your profile. Until you do so, the tag will appear as "pending." Remember that not approving the post doesn't mean that you're not tagged—it simply means that the tag will not appear in your profile. (To remove the tag, you must go to the post, picture, or video you've been tagged in and click on "remove tag" next to your name.)
- Profile visibility. This lets you choose who can see posts that you're tagged in. Select an option in the drop down menu, or create your own option by clicking "Custom." If you have friends who tag you in potentially incriminating circumstances, you may wish to restrict this to people on your friends list who you trust not to hold any of the pictures against you.
- Tag suggestions. When your friend uploads a photo that looks like you and this feature is enabled, Facebook will suggest that they tag you. The tag will only appear if your friend approves it. This facial recognition feature has been controversial and was declared illegal to be turned on by default in Germany.
- Friends can check you into places. Leaving this option enabled will allow your friends to tag you with them when they check in to places. You will always be notified when friends check you in with them, and you have the ability to remove the checkin from your profile. If you disable this feature, they will not be able to check you in to begin with.
- Tag Review. Turning on tag review will allow you to review any tags your friends add to your profile before the tags appear. This is for when people look at your photos and videos and want to tag themselves, or other people, in them
Click the "Info" tab of your profile, and then hit edit in the right corner. Alternatively, click "Edit My Profile" under your name on the home page.
* Beside each piece of information you will see a drop down menu. You can decide which groups of people will see which information by clicking the menu and selecting the desired option. For example, you can set your work place visible to the public, but only allow your friends to see where you went to college.
* Toggle between different sections of your profile by clicking the options on the left hand side of the page.
#5 Preview your profile as someone else.
Want to check that your privacy settings are keeping elder cousin or your boss from seeing stuff you don't want them to see? You can now see your profile through their eyes. Actually, you have been able to do this for a long time, but it was tucked away deep in the privacy settings. As of August 2011, you can view your profile by clicking "View As..." on the upper right hand side of your profile.
- *Type the name of the person you want to view your profile as. Hit enter. You will then be able to view your profile exactly as that person views it. Make notes of things you want to change. Check your photo albums, old posts, etc. Click "Back to Profile" when you're done.
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Great post
the new facebook was really confusing me,thanks a lot for this information