Adjusting you Facebook privacy settings (this is for nan and pop, I mean, mum and dad)
Facebook have just updated their privacy settings feature … and, unlike previous iterations, it’s pretty good.
All you have to do is go to “the Facebook” and go up to the top right where it has a the nice padlock and the little cog.
Click on the little cog and go to “Privacy settings” (dead give away, that one). You should get this:
In the privacy settings there is a new feature and it is pretty powerful. It looks like this:
If you select “limit past posts” you will basically strip back all the posts you accidentally shared with the world and you really only meant to share with friends. Just click on the “friends” option and you are done here.
To make sure you don’t keep letting the whole world see you posts, go to the “future posts” setting and do the same thing (select friends), like this:
Now, the only part which may be a bit annoying is if you have shared pictures with the world. If you have created an album of pictures, for the most part, you can go to the album and click on the little cog and change to access permissions from global (the globe icon) to friends (the two shadowy figures … apparently, according to Facebook we must keep some pretty bad company sometimes).
However, I found for the default album “mobile uploads” the little cog icon doesn’t give the option to bulk change your settings. Instead, you will have to go into the album and click through each pic and see if at the top of the text on the right (next to the image) there is a little globe icon or a “shadowy friends” icon. If its a globe and you don’t want to share the image with the world, then just click on it and you can adjust it so only friends can see it (if you are divisive, secretive and lead double lives, you can also make it so that certain “lists” can see the image in this menu too).
Now to the little padlock.
Click on the padlock and you will get this:
It’s handy because you can select “Who can see my stuff”.
This gives you the ability to check if you have set up your privacy settings right, and if you have missed making sure that photo of you streaking is locked away from the rest of the world as it rightfully should be.
You can also check to see if people have, and can, tag you in images of their own (“No honey, that girl in Singapore was a company tour guide, I swear.” Of course she was).
That’s pretty well it. You can do a bunch of other stuff, and if you do, then you’re probably hiding stuff from your loved ones and, frankly, Facebook privacy settings are the least of your problems.
Happy hunting over the holidays (I don’t even know what that means), I’m out of here.
