What would our lives be without constant panic induced by Facebook posts that are clearly designed to terrify people into believing that their entire private life is RIGHT AT THIS MOMENT being exposed to the world!  Here’s the most recent rant making its way around Facebook:

This really is a weekly occurrence in the Facebook world.  Understandable, I suppose.  If you combine the fact that Facebook has traditionally been terrible at notifying us regarding changes and the fact that the average user lacks familiarity with the full scope of features on Facebook then you are bound to end up with mass confusion.

SO, please allow me to clarify once and for all what you need to do to protect your privacy in Facebook.

Most of the settings you need to be concerned about are found in the “Privacy Settings and Tools” section of Facebook:

These tools are accessible from your Facebook dashboard either through the ‘lock’ icon or the ‘gear’ icon:

HERE ARE THE 6 THINGS YOU MUST DO TO CONTROL YOUR FACEBOOK PRIVACY:

1. Change Your Privacy Settings to “Friends”.

Every privacy setting in Facebook allows you to choose who can see your activity (and, in fact, who can find you on Facebook).  The three options for privacy are “Everyone”, “Friends of Friends” and “Friends”:

In all cases, (assuming you want privacy) change your privacy settings to “Friends”.  To access your Facebook Privacy settings simply click on the gear icon in the upper right hand corner of your screen and select “Privacy Settings” (as per above).

2. Do NOT tag your Facebook Friends in any of your photos or posts.

A tag links a person, Page, or place to something you post, like a status update or a photo.

When you tag someone, you create a link to their timeline. The post you tag the person in may also be added to that person’s timeline.   Because the post may be added to that person’s timeline your post’s privacy becomes subject to THEIR privacy settings - which could open up your post to an audience you never intended.

3. Ask your Facebook Friends NOT to tag you.

Yes, you can control if tagged photos of you appear on your timeline.  BUT, you cannot control whether or not a tagged photo of you appears on a friend’s timeline (if they choose to tag you).

Blocking a tag on your Timeline only means that your Facebook Friends won’t be notified… it doesn’t mean that no one else will see the photo or the tag through your Friend’s original post.

To help you proactively manage instances of tagging you can choose to be notified when you’ve been tagged by accessing your “Account Settings” (under the gear icon as illustrated above):

Select the “Timeline and Tagging” option from the left hand-side menu.  The second setting under “Who can add things to my timeline?” is an option to review any posts your friends tag you in before they appear on your Timeline.

Turn this Timeline Review feature ON.

You will receive an email notification (if you have enabled email updates) as well as a notification from within Facebook.  Once you’ve been notified you can simply reach out to your friend and ask him/her to remove the tag.

4. Ensure when you post to Facebook that the audience for your post is set to “Friends”.

Every device you use to access Facebook (your desktop/laptop, smartphone, tablet) will have it’s own settings for Facebook that you’ll need to review.

I originally thought that because I had set my default post setting to “Friends”  through my laptop that this meant any post I shared via my iPad or iPhone would also default to “Friends”.  I was wrong.  I quickly discovered that my iPhone posts were going Public!!

Here’s the setting to be aware of:

Check every one of your devices to ensure the default setting is “Friends”.

5. DON’T LIKE any Page, Group, Post, Photo, or Link that you would not want a stranger to know about.

Choosing to like other people’s content on Facebook is a public act.  Plain and simple.  The only control you have on Facebook is over the content that you yourself choose to personally post.  Everything else is out of your hands.

The Facebook Search Graph is taking advantage of all of these public actions in order to create its search results.  If you don’t want to be included in search results then don’t put yourself in the public eye by engaging with other people’s content.

6.  Don’t post private things to Facebook.  PERIOD.

There is truly no simpler explanation than that.  Although you can control a lot of settings in Facebook… you absolutely cannot control the actions of other people.

I can take a screenshot of ANYTHING my friends post to Facebook – either using my laptop, my iPad, or my iPhone – and I can share those posts with the world if I choose to.  There is NOTHING you can do to stop that.  Period.

I recently had a conversation with Evan Hadfield - son of Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield.  As many of you likely know, Commander Hadfield is currently commanding the International Space Station and has created an all new enthusiasm for space primarily through his use of Twitter where he shares incredible photos of Earth taken from the ISS. What you may not realize is that Chris' son Evan is responsible for managing much of Commander Hadfield's social media strategy.

Currently @cmdr_hadfield has nearly 300,000 Twitter followers and averages more than a 1,000 retweets for each photo of Earth he posts.

Geoff

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