Facebook Privacy: Your Personal Info

facebook_privacy The New York Times recently published an article that discusses the severe changes Facebook has made to privacy settings. This is the second post on these changes and each post will give you details on how to manage these new settings so that you can gradually accumulate your Facebook Privacy.

Who Can See Your Personal Info?

Facebook has a section of your profile called “personal info,” but it only includes your interests, activities, and favorites. Other arguably more personal information is not encompassed by the “personal info” setting on Facebook’s Privacy Settings page. That 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, we would bet that many will want to set these to “Only Friends” as well. To do so:

From your Profile page, hover your mouse over the Settings menu at the top right and click “Privacy Settings” from the list that appears.
Click “Profile Information” from the list of choices on the next page.
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 wise here, especially considering information such as this is often used in identity theft.
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” sounds innocuous enough, it 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 an unsavory person access to this information.

Read more from the New York Times article that discusses the Facebook settings that every user should be aware of. Be proactive about what you share on Facebook and protect your online privacy!

Order your copy of the Facebook Safety Survival Guide to make sure you and your children are protected online.

John Sileo became one of America’s leading Social Networking Speakers & sought after Identity Theft Expert after he lost his business and more than $300,000 to identity theft and data breach. His clients include the Department of Defense, Pfizer and the FDIC. To learn more about having him speak at your next meeting or conference, contact him by email or on 800.258.8076.

Posted by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo in Identity Theft Prevention, Online Privacy and tagged Facebook, Facebook Expert, facebook privacy, John Sileo, Privacy, Privacy Facebook, safety, social networking.