University Computer Help Desk

Facebook is about connecting with people, sharing information, and having fun. As your list of Facebook friends grows, you may notice that you're not as close to some as you are to others. You might have a professional relationship with one friend and a relaxed friendship with another.

Facebook has recognized this need for improved privacy settings, and the suggestions in this article will help you maintain a comfortable level of privacy.

Adjusting Privacy Settings

Through Facebook's privacy settings, you can control who can see your profile. This includes things like your birthday, photos, and posts you make. By making changes to the Privacy Settings section of Facebook, you can enact privacy settings that are in effect all the time.

Facebook also allows you to make some privacy decisions on the fly. When you make posts to your wall, you can control which friends see your updates on a case-by-case basis.

Creating Friend Lists

The first way to control privacy is by creating lists of friends. This allows you to put constraints on certain parts of your profile, which are in effect all the time. You should create lists of friends in whatever way makes the most sense to you. We recommend creating categories like Friends, Professional Contacts, and Family.

Control Who Sees Your Posts On-the-Fly

Each time you post a status update on Facebook, you can choose who can view that particular post by clicking the button next to Post. You can then grant or deny access to specific friends. You can also grant or deny access to groups of friends.

This feature is useful when you want to control who sees your status updates. If you think your post might be offensive or inappropriate to some of your friends, you might want to prevent them from seeing that particular post. Your post might also be of a more private nature, one which you would like to share only with certain friends. 

What Privacy Settings Can I Change?

After you're done creating a few lists, go into your Facebook privacy settings and customize things. Facebook allows you to make your profile as open or as restricted as you like. In fact, Facebook might even encourage you to share your profile with Everyone--not just your friends.

We recommend limiting most aspects of your profile to your friends. Information found on your Facebook page, like your birthday, middle name, school names, etc. are sometimes the answers to security questions used for making account changes. Limiting access to your profile means malicious people are less likely to have access to that kind of info.