It is well worth taking the time to double check your privacy settings on Facebook this post is dated as the screen grabs and text were complied in June 2015 and were accurate at that time. Start by clicking the padlock on the top right of your profile page and then you’ll see this:
Privacy Check-up
This is a three part quick check. Firstly “Your Posts”, who can see your next post. Remember this option can be changed as you post and may vary depending on where you are posting from on Facebook (PC, phone or tablet etc.) depending on what you set last time. In general it is probably a good idea to limit to just your Friends. Hopefully, you have chosen your contacts wisely but just in case anyone else hasn’t this limits your posts to just them. You can of course choose other options:
The next step is “Your Apps”. If like me you haven’t looked at this for a while you’ll be surprised at just how many apps you have allowed to access your profile. Edit away to get rid of ones you no longer want (as I drafted this post I discovered that I had over 40 connected).
And the last step in this list is arguably the most important and the least checked part of your Facebook profile, namely your personal details. How many of these you make publicly available is a matter of preference but at a minimum I’d advise your year of birth should be just for your eyes only and limit your birthday info to just friends. All my email addresses I have locked down except for the one that I have given out to friends.
I have changed the privacy settings on my phone number just now as I really would like friends to call me and have taken a detour to review what I have published on this website.
Also click on the ‘About Page’ option to review what else you have published.
Who can see my stuff?
The first part of this section probably looks familiar? If not then see above nots about posts.
Next up is a simple link to your Activity Log to review what you’ve been upto or who has posted on your timeline or has tagged you. Here’s the options on your timeline:
Note: in this privacy check-up we are not offered the opportunity to alter any of the settings that limit what others can ‘do’ to your profile, for that you need to go elsewhere in settings.
The last option in this section is really useful as it allows you to quickly see your timeline through the eyes of others. Click ‘View As’ and at first glance you are back to your personal profile but look closely at the top of the page and you can now fine tune what others can see, from what anyone can see to what individuals can see.
This is good way of checking if you are indeed comfortable with your privacy settings.
Who can contact me?
If you want to have some fun then I suggest you read the Facebook Help page about these options. I have Basic Filtering set because as far as I can determine the other option doesn’t much filtering. Just remember to check your ‘Other Folder’ for messages. Just click on the messages symbol on Facebook and you will see ‘Inbox’ and ‘Other’ with how many unread messages in brackets.
And lastly you can limit who can send you friend requests and as always it is upto you to decide who can ‘accept’. There are some wrinkles about what happens with people who ‘Follow’ your profile but we’ll leave that for another post.
How do I stop someone from bothering me?
It is up to you to decide who to block and you can always review and then Unblock users.