So you are on the web, right? I mean since you are reading this post I would imagine you are. I digress, imagine you are browsing your Facebook feed and BAM! You notice a picture you posted last night at the party and not the most flattering one, that is for sure. As you scroll down through the comments your palms start to sweat as you realise you boss, Mr. Dolfinhiemier, has left the last comment. “Ricky, see me in my office Monday”. How did this happen? When did Mr. Dolfinhiemier get Facebook? Were you even friends with Mr. Dolfinhiemier on Facebook? What could he possible have to say ?!?!
Well, now you are in some deep do-do my friend all because you didn't change some simple privacy settings on your Facebook account, not to mention all that cheap wine and ravioli Ricky. If only you had read this blog post early. If only I had made it earlier. Well, here it is. A beginners guide to Facebook privacy to keep whats private, private (with in the realm of posting to a public social media site).
If you are like most people you probable have a Facebook account, and unless you want everyone who is a member, roughly 2.3 Billion monthly users, to see everything you post than I would suggest altering a few of those privacy settings. There are tons of horror stories due to people leaving their privacy settings open, check it out here or here and see for yourself if you don’t believe me. Anyways, on to it. First thing you are gonna want to do is sign on in to that ol’ Facebook account of yours, and please make sure you use a password that isn’t easy to crack. If you need help crafting a password check out this site. Once you are signed-in, look to the top right of the page select the arrow pointed down and click on the settings option.
Once you click the settings options it will redirect you to a new page with a number of options and settings you can adjust and manage. On the left hand side of the page is a open menu with a number of options to select, the third option from the top is the privacy option, click privacy to adjust the privacy settings of your account.
Now that you are in your privacy settings and tools page you can choose the privacy options that best fits your life, but I will provide you with some basic / standard settings to keep your account private. Facebook has divided these privacy settings into 3 different sections — ‘who can see my stuff’, ‘who can contact me’ & ‘who can look me up’. For the first section, you can choose who can see your future posts. I would suggest switching this option to friends only or specific friends, and if you are really paranoid and for some reason still want to peruse Facebook, you can select only me so all of your future post will be visible only to you. You can even choose specific friends to leave out, so next time Mr. Dolfinhiemier wont have to learn about you ‘freak-end’.
In the second section, ‘who can contact me’, you can choose who can find you on Facebook. Here, you only have two options ‘everyone’ & ‘friends of friends’. I would suggest choosing the latter option, to reduce those catfish Facebook messages. Additionally, there might be an option where you can choose who can view what friends you have on Facebook, you can choose between a few options, the one I would suggest is friends, so that only your friends can view your friends list.
In the third section, ‘who can look me up’ Facebook gives you the option to limit the number of ways people can find your Facebook account. You have options regarding who can find you using the email you have provided to Facebook, your phone number and who can find your account using outside search engines like Google. For the first two options, regarding your email and phone number, I would suggest switching this setting to friends only, so that only your friends can look you up using your email and phone number. For the latter option, regarding outside search engines, I would suggesting switching this to no, so that people can not find your Facebook account through any other search engine besides Facebook. Now, you can rest assured that your aunt Marcy and her devil children will never find out your Facebook account. Phew.
See not so hard was it, now you know the privacy basics so get out there Ricky, you freaky social butterfly.
