What Are My Privacy Options on Facebook?

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For many people, the issue of privacy is a crucial factor when deciding how they would use Facebook, if at all. To alleviate these concerns and to protect users’ information, Facebook allows each user full control of much of their personal details and posts.

When you get a Facebook account, you can withhold details on your profile from others in two ways:

  1. 1. Do not enter the information at all.
  2. 2. Choose a different privacy level for that information.

Do not enter the information at all.

Your Facebook profile is a great way to share bits of info about yourself with others such as your employment, schooling, affiliations, favorite movies and books, kin, etc. But you do not have to fill it all in. In fact you are allowed to leave most of these blank. You do have to enter your real birth date to make sure you meet the minimum age requirement, but you can choose to hide it too.

With statuses and photo sharing, you can use Facebook’s messaging service instead of the Facebook publisher if you want to share stuff with only a friend or two.

Choose a different privacy level for that information.

If you do choose to enter details on your profile, albums or the publisher, you still have the option to limit who sees them. Your choices are:

  1. Everyone – as in everyone, friend or not.
  2. Friends Only – those you have friended.
  3. Friends of Friends – those who are not your friends but are friended by your friends.
  4. Custom – name individual friends or groups of friends, or just yourself.

To set the privacy levels for your Facebook account, enter your Facebook log in information on the home page and then access the Privacy Settings in the Account menu. For the publisher, look for the privacy icon next to Share before you publish anything.

Complete privacy online is virtually impossible. Furthermore it is against the spirit of Facebook to be completely anonymous. In fact you use to connect with people you know and want to know. However this doesn’t mean you have to go completely public. Make use of Facebook’s flexible privacy tools to make it work the way you want.