Celebrating Facebook’s ‘Privacy Day’

Facebook has declared today Privacy Day in honor of their new and improved privacy settings. These new settings are rolling out to users over the course of the day. Famous for not communicating major changes, Facebook appears to be stepping up its game to publicize this round of privacy updates. At some point when you login today, you should be alerted to the privacy settings update and asked to review your settings. In case you haven’t seen that message yet, here’s a breakdown of what’s going to change:

• Simplified settings: Facebook’s privacy center is known to be unruly and complicated. The new interface should help users better control their privacy by making it easier for them to use.
• Privacy settings for each post: The publisher (where you write in your status updates or post wall photos) will include a new privacy box where you can add a privacy setting for that specific update.
• No more “network” based privacy settings: Mark Zuckerberg explained in his open letter last week that that privacy settings for sharing with your network will be removed. This setting made sense when Facebook revolved exclusively, or mainly, around college campuses. People might be ok with sharing information with anyone at their school but not people outside it. Now that some “networks” are entire countries or metro areas, that setting has lost a lot of meaning.
• Emphasis on the Everyone setting: The ‘everyone’ setting actually isn’t new. Facebook snuck that in a while back as it adjusts its platform to get it ready for mainstream search. However, I think it has been causing some confusion. Basically Facebook would like you to make certain information, especially your updates, public to ‘everyone’ so it can use those in search results on Facebook and on other engines. This will help Faecbook compete with Twitter as ‘real time search’  becomes more and more popular. This is great in concept, but just be careful – the ‘everyone’ setting means, potentially, everyone on the internet, not just everyone on Facebook.

This video, from Facebook, shows the simple steps each user is expected to take in order to update their settings:

Changes and updates are one thing, but if you’re like me, you probably set your privacy controls a while back and haven’t dusted them off for review in a while. Let’s celebrate Facebook’s privacy day by going back to check on those settings and make sure they’re up to par. Here are some of my personal tips for doing that effectively:

• Start with lists: This may seem incongruous, but first, click on Friends in the top navigation and make sure key people have been added to an appropriate list. When you get to the friends page you can click “create a list” and add friends to it. For example, make a list for coworkers, one for family members, clients, teachers, etc.
• Use custom settings: Facebook provides general privacy settings like “friends” “friends of friends” and so on. Below that you can select custom. When you choose custom you have an “except these people” option. In that field, you can type in the name of any list you created. For example, on “tagged photos” you can type in “Coworkers” in the “except” field. That way they won’t be able to see those embarrassing pictures your friends insist on tagging you in.
• Don’t forget privacy when you upload: Each photo album, video, and now each individual update, can have it’s own privacy setting. So if you want to upload that album of Vegas pictures, use the custom settings and “except these people” options appropriately. Same goes for that update about your weekend that you might not want Mom, or your family list, to see.
• Check your work: At the top of the privacy page you can type in the name of one of you friends and view your profile “through their eyes.” This is a handy feature to make sure you’ve done it right. Assuming you have, when you type in a name from one of your lists (your mom, client, coworker, whoever) and view their view of your profile – it should be ‘clean’ to whatever standards you want it. If those Vegas pictures are still there – you know you need to do a little more tweaking.

Have any other tips for setting up Facebook privacy? How about opinions on the update and changes? Let me know in the comments!

Tagged as: facebook, facebook privacy, facebook privacy day, facebook privacy settings, how to set up facebook privacy, privacy day, real time search

This article is from Katie Van Domelen

A social media native, Katie is passionate about sharing her experience with others and helping clients navigate those initial roadblocks to participating in this space. Katie provides highly detailed and organized research with strategic and actionable recommendations to Sitewire’s clients.

Katie has written 33 posts.