TIPS: Increasing your Facebook privacy

The other day after I had spent some time tightening down my Facebook privacy, I posted a little Status update informing everyone of my little accomplishment. Since then, I have been sent quite a few message from friends asking how they can do the same. So instead of repeating myself, I decided to crank out a quick post that can help.

Decide what you want to be available to EVERYONE

The first thing you need to decide is; how much of your Facebook profile can be seen by people who you don’t know. (I class ‘Friend’s of Friend’s’ as people I don’t know). Whilst you may know all of your friends quite well, you have no idea who they decided to brush shoulders with in the past. And I am sure many of us are guilty of adding people as friends who we only met once on drunken night out…

How to check  what can be seen by the EVERYONE

Second thing you’ll need is either a second Facebook account (I have two; one for friends, one for work colleagues). OR a friend who you can sit with whilst you do this. They’ll need to ‘un-friend’ you to be able to see how much of your profile you can see from someone who is not a friend. 

• With your 2nd account (or your friends account that are no longer a Facebook Friend), do a Profile Search in the top bar for your name.

• Once you see your account click on it to display what can be seen by anyone in the world (you might find it disturbing). I have blurred some bits of the profile out to protect the innocent.

Scroll down to see more sections that can be seen, for example your ‘Likes’.

Also, check out your photo’s to see if any of your photo’s can been accessed by people who are not your friends.

How to change your privacy settings

So now you have seen what can be seen by people in the outside world, you can now start to change the settings of the various parts of your profile that would like to restrict. In my example I want to restrict the following:

• Restrict access to my timeline posts (https://www.facebook.com/help/393920637330807)
• Restrict access to my ‘Likes’, ‘Places’
• Restrict access to my ‘Mobile Upload’ photos (https://www.facebook.com/help/www/290447131050867?rdrhc)
• Restrict who can see my Friends list
• Restrict my Work and Education
• Restrict the Places I’ve lived

So, to find out how to restrict these different profile items I just do a simple Google search. For example: facebook change privacy settings for mobile uploads. I just go through each one of the items one at time. After each change, refresh your second Facebook account to make sure the sections are disappearing as you restrict them.

Pretty simple really, key thing is to have two account to use.

The Results

After changing the privacy settings on my Facebook account this is now what can be seen by people who are not one of my ‘Friends’

Before

After

Any questions, just comment below.