Face your Facebook Fears

1. Face your Facebook Fears Take control of your profile privacy settings and use Facebook to communicate with students IACAC Conference, 5/5/11 Session D:25  Presenters: Van Miller, Assistant Director of Admissions, Illinois Wesleyan University Beth Gilfillan, College Counselor, Deerfield High School Chris Kawakita, Associate Director of Admissions, Illinois Wesleyan University

2. Click "Account"... then click "Privacy Settings"... Accessing your privacy settings

3. Privacy related to apps and websites Click on "Edit your settings" in the bottom left corner...

4. - If you use any apps, you can click on "Edit Settings" to review the permissions you have granted the apps developers. (Note: App and game developers access various aspects of your personal information.) - If you don't want your Facebook profile to come up in public searches (like Google), you should click "Public search" and then "Edit Settings."

5. Control the personal contact information you share: Click on "Profile," and then "Edit Profile." Next, click on "Contact Information," and select what information you want to share (or not share).

6. Creating Friend Lists: the key to privacy customization Creating a Friend List allows you to customize the information you share with the people with whom you interact on Facebook. For example, you may want to grant your college friends a higher level of access than your colleagues. 

7. To start, go to "Account," and then "Edit Friends."

8. To see all of your friends, click on "Recently Added," and then change to "All Friends."  Next, click on "+Create a List," and create your list. You may want to start with a "Professional" list or "Family" -- it's up to you.

9. When you click on "+Create a List," you will be asked to provide a name (like "Professional"), and you may add friends to that list at that time by clicking on their profile picture.  Another way to add people to your customized lists: when you are looking at your friend list (path: Account, Edit Friends), you will see an "Edit Lists" option come up for each friend, just to the left of the "x" in the corner. For any new friend request, you will have to "Respond to Friend Request," and it is at this time that you will have the option to "add to list" prior to confirming them as a friend. If you don't put someone on a list, they will receive the highest level of access to your information.

10. The next step: customizing access to your information based on your friend lists Return to your Privacy Settings page.

11. Notice that Facebook provides their "Recommended" settings. You need to decide if you are comfortable sharing at their recommended levels.

12. First, click on "View Settings."

13. This screen is where you can customize the following: who can search for you on Facebook; who can send you friend requests; who can send you messages; who can see your friend list; who can see your education and work; who can see your current city and hometown; and who can see your likes, activities and other connections. 

14. Second, click on "Customize settings."

15. It's on this screen that you can control the things you share, including: posts by you; family; relationships; interested in; bio and favorite quotes; website; religious and political views; birthday; and places you check into. 

16. It's on this same screen that you can control the things others share, including: photos and videos you're tagged in; permission to comment on your posts; suggest photos of you to your friends; if you'll allow friends to post on your wall; and who can see wall posts by your friends. You can also control who sees your contact information here. 

17. You can customize permission for each of these lines of information. If you haven't created lists, you'll have the option to let the following people see your information: Everyone, Friends of Friends and Networks, Friends and Networks, Friends of Friends, Friends Only. Notice that the permission starts off completely open to everyone and becomes more private until you are left with Friends Only.  However, you may not want all of your friends to see everything on your profile, which is why you may have created lists. In order to customize which lists of friends can access certain information, you'll want to click on "Custom."

18. When you click on "Custom," the following box will pop out. In the example provided, the information is made visible to "Friends Only" but is then hidden from friends who are assigned to two different lists, "limited profile" and "Current Student."  If you want to hide information from a list, you will type that list's name in the box following "These people." It is also possible to hide information from individual friends, but you can see how that would get very confusing very quickly. Using lists allows you to apply these settings to groups of people all at one time. 

19. If you get confused while you are working on these permissions, know that you always have the option to preview your profile to see how it will look to one of your friends. For example, if you want to check to see what your supervisor sees when she/he views your page, you can click on "Preview My Profile"... ...and then type in one of your friends' names to see how your profile looks to them. 

20. Other things to be mindful of when customizing your permissions • Don't allow everyone to see the photos, videos, etc. that you are tagged in. • You have no control over what crazy picture someone digs up of you, but you do have control over who can see it. • Pay attention to your privacy settings on every photo album. • You may not want to share your "summer fun" pictures with everyone on Facebook. • Your religious and political views.  • If you don't want these to be brought up in conversation by your FB friends, don't allow those people to see them.

21. Now that you have created your lists, you will want to consider who will be receiving your wall posts.  You can customize this under your "Customize Settings" (as demonstrated three slides ago). You can also customize from your profile's Wall.  Under your Status update box, you will see a drop-down tab to the left of the "Share" button.

22. That drop-down box will be the same as you saw in the "Customize settings" section of your privacy settings. The benefit of also being able to access it from your wall is that you can adjust your privacy setting for each individual post. 

23. This pop-out box should look familiar because it's the same one that you'll see under "Customize settings," and it works the same way. If we wanted to hide this post from anyone linked to the "professional" list, we would type "professional" into the box where the arrow is pointing. Then, we'd need to click "Save Settings" for that action to be saved.  If you want, you can also check the box to "Make this my default setting" if you have decided that you want to apply these changes to all of your future posts.