Everything You Need to Know About Facebook Privacy

Everything You Need to Know About Facebook Privacy

Everything You Need to Know About Facebook Privacy

Discussing Facebook privacy poses a challenge in balancing privacy and enjoyment. It connects friends worldwide but also shares information we previously considered private. Searching for people based on education, location, clubs, and relationships raises the question: when does it cross the line?

When signing up on Facebook, your birthday is the first information collected. It’s enjoyable receiving birthday wishes, but now it becomes public knowledge. However, when verifying your identity with institutions like banks, they often ask for your birthday. Password recovery systems may also inquire about your high school, assuming it’s private knowledge. Unfortunately, you’ve inadvertently shared these details on Facebook. Oops!

We’ve all heard stories of people who’ve lost their jobs after less-than-wholesome pictures or statements have gone public. If you have a reputation to keep, you definitely don’t want pictures from last weekend’s private party showing up, especially if you really let your hair down. While you can’t control what others do with photos they take of you, you can control whether or not you’re tagged in them.

Fortunately, there are settings in Facebook that allow you to control who sees what information and what happens when youíre tagged. Despite what you may have heard or seen floating around in a Facebook share hoax, you do have complete control over your Facebook privacy, and it’s easy to adjust.

How to Check and Adjust Your Facebook Privacy Settings

See what your account looks like to an outsider

From your Facebook homepage, click your name on the blue bar at the top of the page. Click the three dots next to ‘View Activity Log’ and then select ‘View as’

Run a quick privacy checkup

Click the question mark in the top right corner and choose ‘privacy checkup’.

Think about what you really need to share ñ do people need to know the YEAR of your birth or just your birthday? Your friends will still get the notification, and you’ll still get the balloons.

Edit advanced privacy

While the checkup covers the most obvious info, you can go much deeper. Click the V-shaped dropdown to the right of the question mark. Go to settings and choose privacy.

Adjust timeline and tagging

In the privacy settings, you can explicitly control who can tag you, who can see or share the tagged content, and what shows up on your newsfeed. Read more about controlling your privacy on Facebook here.

Tightening your Facebook privacy only takes a few minutes, but it can save you a whole lot of trouble in the future. If you need help with this, just give us a call at 570.235.1946 or visit our Contact Page