Protect your Facebook Privacy in three steps

Facebook is the leading social networking site and its popularity is increasing day by day. As per the latest trend in total traffic Facebook comes just second to Google. In the past we have seen lots of Privacy related issues popped up and Facebook team constantly trying to improve the security. In an over crowded world with many social networking sites you have to very careful for your privacy. Here is the 3 steps to protect your privacy in Facebook. It is simple to follow and so i am not uploading all those screenshots.

Who Can See The Things You Share

Probably the most critical of the "privacy" changes was the change made to status updates. Although there’s now a button beneath the status update field that lets you select who can view any particular update, the new Facebook default for this setting is "Everyone." And by everyone, they mean everyone. If you accepted the new recommended settings then you voluntarily gave Facebook the right to share the information about the items you post with any user or application on the site. Depending on your search settings, you may have also given Facebook the right to share that information with search engines, too. To change this setting back to something of a more private nature, do the following:

1. From your Profile page, hover your mouse over the Settings menu at the top right and click "Privacy Settings" from the list that appears.
2. Click "Profile Information" from the list of choices on the next page.
3. Scroll down to the setting "Posts by Me." This encompasses anything you post, including status updates, links, notes, photos, and videos.
4. Change this setting using the drop-down box on the right. change this to "Only Friends" setting to ensure that only those people you’ve specifically added as a friend on the network can see the things you post.

Who Can See Your Personal Info

Facebook has a section of your profile called "personal info," it includes your interests, activities, and favorites. Other information includes things like your birthday, your religious and political views, and your relationship status. After last month’s privacy changes, Facebook set the new defaults for this other information to viewable by either "Everyone" (for family and relationships, aka relationship status) or to "Friends of Friends" (birthday, religious and political views). Depending on your own preferences, you can update each of these fields as you see fit. However,  many will want to set these to "Only Friends" as well. To do so,

1. From your Profile page, hover your mouse over the Settings menu at the top right and click "Privacy Settings" from the list that appears.
2. Click "Profile Information" from the list of choices on the next page.
3. The third, fourth, and fifth item listed on this page are as follows: "birthday," "religious and political views," and "family and relationship." Locking down birthday to "Only Friends" is good, especially considering information such as this is often used in identity theft.
4. Depending on your own personal preferences, you may or may not feel comfortable sharing your relationship status and religious and political views with complete strangers. And keep in mind, any setting besides "Only Friends" is just that – a stranger. While "Friends of Friends" refers to everyone your friends have added as friends, a large group containing hundreds if not thousands of people you don’t know. All it takes is one less-than-selective friend in your network to give that ‘not so friendly’ person access to this information.

Keep Your Data Off the Search Engines

When you visit Facebook’s Search Settings page, a warning message pops up. Apparently, Facebook wants to clear the air about what info is being indexed by Google . There have been misleading rumors recently about Facebook indexing all your information on Google. This is not true. Facebook created public search listings in 2007 to enable people to search for your name and see a link to your Facebook profile. They will still only see a basic set of information.While that may be true to a point, the second setting listed on this Search Settings page refers to exactly what you’re allowing Google to index. If the box next to "Allow" is checked, you’re giving search engines the ability to access and index any information you’ve marked as visible by "Everyone." As you can see from the settings discussed above, if you had not made some changes to certain fields, you would be sharing quite a bit with the search engines, probably more information.

To keep your data private and out of the search engines, do the following:

1. From your Profile page, hover your mouse over the Settings menu at the top right and click "Privacy Settings" from the list that appears.
2. Click "Search" from the list of choices on the next page.
3. Click "Close" on the pop-up message that appears.
4. On this page, uncheck the box labeled "Allow" next to the second setting "Public Search Results." That keeps all your publicly shared information including items set to viewable by "Everyone" out of the search engines. If you want to see what the end result looks like, click the "see preview" link in blue underneath this setting. 

Considering that Facebook itself is no longer looking out for you, it’s time to be proactive about things and look out for yourself instead. It just take few minutes to run through all the available privacy settings and educating yourself on what they really mean could mean the world of difference to you. Facebook think that world is more open ( and you ) so you have to be more careful in the over crowded world not Facebook!

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