Privacy on Facebook

If you have a Facebook profile, you know that your information can be seen by all of your friends. Your information can also be seen by friends of your friends, or by everyone, depending on what privacy settings you choose. You can even include your email, phone number and home address if you so desire. While having your information public can be great for business reasons or for networking, many people do not want this information available to others.

There are a lot of things that you can do to keep your information private.*

1. Use your friend lists: Friends can be sorted into categories such as friends, family and professional and you can share different things between each category.

2. Remove Yourself From Facebook Search Results: Change settings so people can’t search for you.

3. Remove Yourself From Google: Turn off the ability for your profile to be searched.

4. Avoid the Infamous Photo/Video Tag Mistake: You can make the photos that you are tagged in private.

5. Protect Your Albums: You can make certain photo albums private.

6. Prevent Stories From Showing Up in Your Friends’ News Feeds: You can make things like relationship status changes private.

7. Protect Against Published Application Stories: This is avoidable by not joining applications that could embarrass you.

8. Make Your Contact Information Private: You can adjust privacy settings for each piece of information.

9. Avoid Embarrassing Wall Posts: You can pick which friends can post on your wall.

10. Keep Your Friendships Private: You can hide your friends section in your information.

*All ten tips are from the following website:

O'Neill, Nick. 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know. 2 February 2009. 10 November 2012 <http://allfacebook.com/facebook-privacy_b3571>.

                Many employers now look at potential future employee’s Facebook pages, twitter feeds and accounts on other social media sites. Employers can decide not to hire someone if they don‘t like what they see on these kinds of sites. Following the pointers from above can keep your information safe and avoid potentially embarrassing situations.