Mom's Guide: Privacy on Facebook



Mom: Hey dear! Are you up on Facebook?
Son: Yes Mom! Thanks to the idea of faking year of birth; In Facebook I am 20 years old and it allowed me in. Look here I have shared a message as well.

Mom: When you share a status message, photo, link or a video (collectively known as posts), have you wondered about visibility of the post i.e. who can see that post?
Son: Obviously. Facebook is about friends so my posts are also visible to my friends only.

Mom: Are you sure? Have you changed the settings?
Son: What settings?
Mom: Then you just check your posts again. As I know, if you are new to Facebook and you have never changed your settings, your posts are public i.e. visible to everyone in the world even without logging in to Facebook.

Son: Oops.... but I want to share only with my friends. Isn't there a way? You were talking about some settings.
Mom: Yep! whenever you create a post, you have to pay attention to bottom-write area of the publisher. Right previous to the post button, privacy setting tool for the post is provided. You must choose who all you want to show this post.

Son: Oh great! But wait .... do I have to do this for every post? That will be too much. I may forget about it some time.
Mom: Oh No my boy .... you can setup the default privacy for all future posts from the privacy settings page.

Son: Yess.... now its makes sense. And the custom option is also available. So I can choose to share with a list or specific people and also can hide my post from specific people. This is really fantastic.
Mom: Yes the control is there but never hide anything from me :) and you know if you are on a custom list, the default privacy for the post is automatically set to that list only. So remember to add me on all your lists.

Son: But Mom I can take care of privacy for my new posts. What about the old posts? They will remain visible to everyone.
Mom: Nop!!! Go to your wall. You get the options to set the privacy of any post that is already submitted.
And again on privacy settings page, you can change the visibility of all previous posts in one shot.

Son: That's very good. Let me do it now.
Mom: Okay dear .... Enjoy safe posting on Facebook.


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