How to use Facebook's new privacy settings

By Cole Landfried
Edited by Megan Thornton

With Facebook's new privacy settings, anyone can log onto the site and see your name, profile picture, gender, current city of residence, what networks you belong to, and what pages you are a fan of. You can’t keep that part of your profile private anymore, but you can make sure other
important information is secured through Facebook’s privacy settings.

Can everybody see it?
Under Facebook's new privacy settings, you page is “indexed” on search engines, which means that anyone who googles your name will see your Facebook page on the search results. Don't like that? You can change your settings to keep your profile hidden from Google searches.

-Go to “Account” on the top right of your Facebook page.
-Click on “Privacy Settings.”
-Click “Search Settings.”
-Deselect “Allow” beside public search results. This turns off indexing.

What can other Facebook users see?
If you opted into Facebook's suggested new privacy settings, anyone that looks at your Facebook page can see your “about me” section, your personal information, family and relationship status, work and education, and any posts (status updates, notes, etc.) that you place on your wall. Anyone who is friends with your friends on Facebook can see photos and videos of you, your birthday, and your religious and political views. Sound a little too public? You can adjust your settings to fix that too.

-Go to “Account” again.
-Click on “Privacy Settings.”
-Click on “Profile Information.”
-From here, you can choose whether you want your profile information available to everyone, just friends, or friends of friends. You can also limit access to certain individual people or friend lists.

What are friend lists?
Friend lists allow you to separate your Facebook friends into groups. This is useful if you have photos on your Facebook page that you want your friends to see, but not your boss or coworkers.

To make a friend list with limited access to your profile page:

-Click on the “Chat” tab in the lower left hand corner of your Facebook homepage.
-The tab should expand to show friends that are online. Click “Friend Lists” at the top.
-Create a new list, hit “Enter.”
-The new list will appear above your friend list. From here, you can drag friends from your friend lists and place them into your new list.

-You can also select “Edit” beside the list's name, which will open a window that allows you to add multiple friends at once.
-Go to “Account.”
-Click on “Privacy Settings,” then “Profile Info.”
-Find the profile information that you want to hide, like your “About Me” information. There will be a rectangle with a lock inside it to the right of the information.
-Click on the box. Select “Customize,” “Hide From,” then “List.” When you select the list that you made, that piece of profile information is hidden from everyone on it.

With friend lists, you can customize your Facebook so that your friends, family, and coworkers have different degrees of access to your information. It may be useful to divide your photos into two separate categories: albums that you would like coworkers and relatives to see, and ones that are just for you and your friends. Use friend lists to determine who sees which albums.