This set of tips for Facebook privacy settings shows you how to take full control of your profile, applications, contact details and wall posts under the latest version of Facebook.
These 10 tips are all you need to block prying eyes from your personal profile.
1. Create Friends Lists
Friends Lists allow you to filter Facebook content more easily. Fastest way to create a list: click 'Home' on the main menu bar, then 'Friends' in the sidebar on the left. You'll see the 'Create a List' button at the top of the page. Enter a name for your list – 'Work' or 'Mates', for example - and select friends to add to it.
2. Add people to existing lists
As well as adding people to a list when it's first created you can select and add them after. Click Account > Edit Friends then click 'All Connections'. You'll see your entire list of friends, with an 'Add to List' button next to each. You can also add new friends to lists when inviting them or accepting invitations.
CHOOSE YOUR FRIENDS: Friends Lists are your friends. Both literally and metaphorically. Use them to control your privacy settings
3. Protect Facebook status updates
By default, Facebook has three levels of privacy: Friends, Friends of Friends and Everyone. Everything you can see on your Facebook page, from wall posts to photos is restricted to one of these groups. But, you can also exclude people from, seeing content using lists.
Try this: go to 'View my Profile' and go to your Wall. Type in a status update but, before posting it, click the Privacy menu button. It looks like a padlock with an arrow next to it. Choose 'Customise'. In the 'Hide This From' box and type the name of a list. Click OK and your update will be hidden from all the folks in that list...
4. Hide Facebook Wall posts
To hide wall posts from a list, go to Account > Privacy Settings and click 'Profile Information'. There are four entries that affect wall posts, 'Posts by Me', 'Posts by Friends' and 'Comments on Posts' can be filtered by list. Click the Privacy drop down next to an item and choose 'Customise'. Type the name of the list in the 'Hide this From...' box.
CLEAN THE WALL: You can't control what your friends say on your Facebook wall, but you can hide posts from sensitive eyes
5. Prevent Facebook notification spam
There are few things more intrusive than applications that spam you automatically every time they update. The next time someone's annoying Farmville update or Mafia Wars notification appears in your feed, move your cursor over the post. A 'Hide' link appears. When you click it, you'll be given the option to hide all posts from the chosen application or even from that specific friend.
6. Stop embarrassing photo tags
You can't stop people tagging photos of you drunkenly dancing the conga, but you can stop others from seeing the tag. Go to the Privacy Settings section again and choose 'Profile Information'. Next to 'Photos and videos of me' choose 'Custom' from the drop down, then choose 'Only me' from the 'Make this visible to' menu.
NO TAGS: Your boss probably won't be impressed by photos of you passed out in a pool of your own fluids - so hide picture tags from your friends
7. Go invisible
Did that bloke who used to flick spitballs at you in Double Physics find you on Facebook and send you a friend request? This could have been prevented if you'd removed yourself from searches. In Privacy Settings, go to 'Search'. You can configure this so only your current friends can find you.
8. Remove your Facebook profile from search engines
What if your old nemesis is more persistent, turning to Google next to find your Facebook listing? No worries. In the very same 'Search' section of Privacy Settings, untick the box labelled 'Allow' in 'Public Search Results'. Give it a few days and your Facebook profile will quietly disappear from search engines.
SEARCH SETTINGS: You can preview how your profile will appear to people searching for you using Google or Bing - or block search altogether
9. Block intrusive applications
Some applications - including apps that only your friends have installed - use your image and even your profile data in updates. Stop 'em from accessing your information by going to Privacy Settings and choosing "Applications and Websites". The crucial configuration tools are in "What your friends can share about you". The list of available data is a bit unnerving - but don't worry, untick any entry and your info will stay private.
10. Hide your Facebook contact details
As with the majority of Privacy Settings, you can choose to hide certain contact details from specified lists of people. For example, if you don't want work colleagues to see your home number, first make a Friends List of the folks you want to exclude. Go to 'Contact Details' in Privacy setting. Choose 'Other Phone' and 'Custom' to hide the number from that list.
CONTACT MANAGEMENT: Facebook encourages you to enter every contact address you have... Fortunately, you can restrict visibility to a privileged few
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Read more: http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/10-tips-to-protect-your-privacy-on-facebook-682955#ixzz0mwLsTH6W
