When you "like", share or comment on a Facebook post, persons you do not know are able to view what you have shared, commented on or liked, by default. If you are concerned about who is able to view your comments, photos, videos, the posts you liked or shared, you may need to learn more about your privacy settings on Facebook. Below are tips that will help you with your Facebook privacy. You may also want to educate your friends about these tips because they also affect your privacy on Facebook.
Facebook Privacy Settings:
- Stop using the “Friends of Friends” privacy settings. This allows everyone who is friends of your friends, who are friends of their friends, who are also friends of their friends and, the list goes on, to view what you have posted. If you have a lot of friends and your friends have a lot of friends, anything you post maybe shared with thousands of persons on Facebook.
- Use the “Friends” privacy setting. This setting only allows your friends to see what you have posted. Everybody else will not be able to view what you have posted.
- Use “Custom” privacy setting. This allows you to create a list of the persons who you want to only be able to view your posts.
- Before you share, like or comment on a post, there is an icon at the right of the post that will indicate to you who it was shared with. If there is a globe icon (see below), it means the post was shared with everyone or the public. If the icon has two heads, it means the post was shared with the friends of the person who posted the post. You can move your mouse over the icons for more information
Facebook has created a shortcut, on the right of the blue menu bar at the top of the page, to your privacy settings. The shortcut icon looks like a closed padlock.
Click on each privacy option to manage your Facebook privacy.