Safer Facebook Viewing

A lot of people have been really confused lately about how Facebook constantly changes their policies as if they had ants in their pants. This guide is a simple one- it will show you what you need to do to keep your posts private and out of the hands of anyone who you do not want seeing it. Keep in mind, however that this will not stop law enforcement from monitoring you if you are being a baddie. Start where the photo tells you to by clicking "account settings".

This is one of two facebook menus that allow you to manage your privacy. 1) This will show your name as it is shown on your facebook page. 2) I believe your username allows you to have a unique name at the end of the http address, and I do not mess with this setting. 3) your email as shown on your facebook page. You can hide this later. 4) Your password information. Include passwords with numbers, letters, and capitalized letters.

This makes it harder for a program to crack your account. Passwords such as using your username, 1234, or qwerty will be immediately cracked. 5) I have no need for networks and cannot explain their security, so don't join one. 6) I believe linked accounts are for family members/kids. No need to mess with it. The language option is self explanatory. Facebook will also allow you to download a copy of all the information you have put onto it by clicking "Download a copy".

Click here to do the brunt of the work: privacy settings. Before you do so, go in the upper right hand corner and select Security under "General". MAKE SURE THAT YOU ARE SET TO A SECURE BROWSING MODE USING HTTPS. This will make it harder for someone to hijack or take control of your account.

1) Your default settings for photos and text. Switch this to friends only. By selecting custom, you can choose to hide your wall from certain individuals or groups. 2) This will control how you meet people on Facebook, and who can look you up. 3) Control what and how information about you is tagged. 4) Apps and Websites are legally allowed to collect your information if you agree to use them. No matter how much you whine about how unfair it is, that is their policy. Turn apps you do not use off. 5) The limit audience option allows you to tell facebook to go back to your earliest posts and mark them private from the eyes of the public. 6) This feature manages blocked apps and people you do not want to deal with on Facebook.

How you Connect
1.) Facebook "strongly encourages" you to meet more people by keeping your lookup information public. Select friends of friends to be safest. This means that only friends in a friend's list can look up your timeline or contact information. In fact, I would set it just to friends. 2.) You can control exactly who sends you friend requests. Don't accept friend requests from people you do not know, and set this to "Friends of Friends", so that only friends on a friend's list can become friends with you. 3) Set send facebook messages to friends only. 4) You can control who posts on your wall. I would set it to friends, or if you want tight control over what content is started on your wall, select "me". 5) This option let's others comments of you (on your wall) show up on your wall, and regulates who sees it. Select friends only.

1) Timeline review allows you to review any tags made on Facebook before they appear on YOUR WALL. If you have important people in your circle, you want to turn this on. Note that although you remove the tag from your wall, it can still appear on someone else's page. Say Jamie went to a party underage and was tagged with a beer in her hands by Sarah. Jamie can decline the tag on her wall, but Sarah can still have the tag. 2) The tag review is a control that allows you to monitor anything your friends tag in your content. Say you post a picture and have this feature on. Joey, your friend wants to tag Wallace in a photo. With this on, you will need to approve of the action before it is done.

3) The maximum timeline visibility control sets the minimum for who can see stuff that you are tagged in when it appears on your wall. Set this to friends. 4) Tag suggestions is a feature by facebook that asks who is in the photo. Set this to friends. The final feature, if you are concerned about privacy, needs to be turned off. This feature will show your location on Facebook, and if someone is stalking you and is surepticiously cutting at the edges by using your friends to get to you, they can find out where you are when a friend checks you in.

THE biggest mistake Facebook users make is the assumption that their data privacy is assured when they sign up for any app. This is simply not true. You need to be wary of what apps you are using, because they can be created by anybody. In this section, you will see what the app has access to. Although not seen here, an option said that under my agreement to use it, the app could access my information freely when I was not using facebook. I unchecked that, and anything else that was not required. Do the same, and get rid of apps you don't know anything about. This will keep your information out of the hands of companies that want it.

Other than these tips, don't do anything stupid and don't post things you will regret later. I hope you have a safer experience!