If you’d like to have more control over your privacy on Facebook, it isn’t easy. I’ve had several friends ask me how they can make their Facebook profiles and pages more private, and I’ve been struggling to do this for my own Facebook account. Facebook is going to roll out an updated privacy settings tool tomorrow, so I’m focusing on how to use public pages and other techniques to protect your Facebook privacy.
Why you should check your own Facebook privacy settings
Facebook has made many changes in its privacy controls and features over the years. Matt McKeon’s infographic on Facebook privacy shows how Facebook’s privacy policy has eroded. I find it difficult to keep track of these changes, as some are very specific or granular. Bruce Nussbaum has pointed out in Facebook’s culture problem may be fatal that these actions may cause Facebook’s core audience to abandon a free service that has commoditized its users.
These settings can be confusing. For example, let’s say that you want to let your Facebook friends see your Facebook photo albums, but you don’t want the rest of the Internet to have access.
One way to do this is to:
- Log in to your Facebook account;
- Go to the Account menu;
- Choose Privacy settings;
- Click on personal information and posts;
- Go to the row marked Photo Albums;
- Set your photos privacy setting to “Friends”.
Easy, huh? Facebook has changed these menu options and choices in the past, and I expect they will do it again.
“Friends of friends” might not be your friends
If you decide to use the “Friends of friends” setting instead of the “Friends” setting, you’ve just given ALL of your friends’ friends access to your photo albums.
While this may not seem like a problem, remember that you have NO control over who your friends choose as their friends on Facebook.
You may not have your supervisor, your mother or your ex on your own friends list, but if they’re on just one of your friend’s lists, then they will have access to your photo albums.
Some Facebook privacy changes were introduced in an opt-out manner, so that users would have to check their accounts and move the defaults to a more private setting. While an opt-in model might preserve privacy, the opt-out model lets Facebook change the settings for every user.
It’s worth checking your Facebook account on a regular basis with a third-party tool like ReclaimPrivacy.org
A disclaimer
Here’s my notes on the various options a Facebook user has to manage their account privacy.
Note: These aren’t recommendations, just my own notes. If you find errors, leave me a comment and a valid, real e-mail address and I’ll follow up. Use these notes at your own risk, and do some research before you make changes to your Facebook accounts. I’m not responsible if you lose or misconfigure something.
Set up a public figure page in your existing Facebook account
One alternative that is within the Facebook TOS is setting up a new public page as a public figure in your existing personal Facebook account.
You can then invite anyone to “like” the new public page. As your friends migrate to the page, you can then remove them from your friends list.
Use one Facebook account and set up separate professional friend lists
One solution is to use Facebook’s privacy controls to separate your friends into 2 groups: professional and personal. Boris Epstein has a fine 2009 article on Mashable called How to: Use Facebook for professional networking. If you read through the article, you’ll also need to check Barb Dybwad’s Mashable article called How to: Create Friend lists on Facebook.
This option is reasonable if you don’t have many facebook Friends. It may take a great deal of effort on your part to set up and manage the multiple friend lists and their privacy settings.
I’m a long-time fan of Facebook friend lists, if only to organize my Facebook friends into specific groups. You can put a specific friend on more than one list. Unfortunately, Facebook’s friend list editing tools leave a lot to be desired.
Set up a second Facebook account
It’s against the Facebook TOS to have 2 user accounts. That’s exactly what this Wikia article called How to use Facebook as a professional networking tool recommends doing.
You’ll have to use different email addresses for each account, and you shouldn’t friend one account from the other if you don’t want people to find the connection.
If Facebook staffers discover you doing this, the Terms of Service state that Facebook can delete all of your Facebook accounts.
Set up a new business account in Facebook
A third alternative requires you to log out of Facebook, set up a new public page for yourself as a public figure, and then claim it with an email address that you have not registered in Facebook.
It’s important that you do NOT set up a profile from the link over the new page. this will convert this account from a business Facebook account to a personal Facebook account. Once that conversion happens, there’s no reverting back to the business account status. See these Facebook FAQ pages for information on What is the difference between a business account and a personal account? and What is the difference between a business account and a user profile?
If you’re setting up a new public page as a separate account, you may want to invite some current Facebook friends to follow or “like” the new page. When they do so, you can then remove or delete your migrated friends from your original Facebook account. Helium’s guide to deleting Facebook friends has some tips.
Replace your current Facebook account with a new Facebook account
There’s the semi-nuclear option described in Lifehacker’s article How to quit Facebook without actually quitting Facebook. Set up a new Facebook account, and then, migrate the friends you would like to keep to the new account.
When you’re done, delete your original Facebook account using the tips at the bottom of this article. This may remove your ability to edit, tag and delete photos, links, posts and other Facebook data that you posted, or that someone else has tagged to your old account.
The nuclear option
Finally, there’s the nuclear option of deleting your existing Facebook account entirely. Facebook doesn’t make this option easy to find or execute, much to the chagrin of those Facebook users who are considering quitting the service.
Disabling or deactivating your account is not the same thing as deletion. A disabled account can be reactivated be logging into Facebook again, or clicking a Facebook Connect that you’ve used before on a third party site.
This Cnet article by Elinor Mills called Deleting your Facebook account (FAQ) has good information.
On WikiHow.com, there’s also Deactivate a Facebook account and Permanently delete a Facebook account.
Need help?
If you need more information about Facebook, Mashable has an online Facebook Guide Book with plenty of helpful pages.
If you’ve got corrections or comments, feel free to leave them in the form below.
Image by Balakov on Flickr via a Creative Commons license.
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