Social Media & Privacy. Consider locking down your Facebook.
As social networking sites continue to grow, multiple, and become more and more popular, the line between our professional lives and personal lives is becoming blurrier by the minute… and it can be a little nerve racking. ealize how much information on us is out there for a complete stranger to view. It’s good to be aware of this, and to take certain steps/precautions.
Making your Facebook page a little more private, is a great place to start. There are tons of networking sites to find people through, and Facebook is a good tool for after you have already made those connections.
Here are some tips from Drew McLellanon how to protect your privacy on facebook.
Ten Privacy Setting You Should Consider:
Use your friends lists — everyone doesn’t have to see everything.
Remove yourself from the Facebook Search results — if you only want to be found by people you reach out to — this is an easy fix for eliminating most of the unwanted friend invites.
Remove yourself from the Google search– Facebook listing seem to grab great Google juice. So if you want to be found, leave it be. But if you’d prefer more privacy, you can remove yourself from the listings.
The dreaded photo/video tag — this one has cost people jobs, relationships and their own dignity. With a simple change in privacy settings, you can make it so that no one (or just those you choose — think friend lists) can see those tell all photos and videos.
Not everyone needs to see every picture — this holds true of your photo albums as well. You can set privacy settings for each one separately.
Prevent “stories” from showing up on your friends news feed — is there anything more awkward than when your friend goes from in a relationship to it’s complicated or single? Avoid that embarrassment with a few simple settings.
Keep your application updates from being published– do you really want people to know you’re looking for a tommy gun in Mafia Wars or that you’ve wasted yet another hour hitting a new high on Bejeweled?
Make you contact information private – for some people, their cell phone number is public information. But for others who might have arms lengths relationships at best with many of their Facebook friends…a bit less shared would be good.
Censor your friends…keep their thoughts off your wall! – I think this is one of the most critical on the list. You can control who sees your wall and who can write on your wall. Do you really need your frat buddies sharing stories with your boss? I’m guessing not.
Keep your friends private — this isn’t just about your privacy, it’s about your friends’ privacy as well. Remember, anyone who is a friend of yours can pop onto your friends list and cherry pick them for whatever reason they’d want.