Power to the people

In this day and age, with the rise of social media, Internet privacy is an increasingly hot topic.  Facebook, being the most scrutinized on this matter, has implemented, time and again, ever-changing privacy policies.  Mind you, once you sign in to facebook the power is yours, what you put on there and who sees it can be easily managed, it just takes a bit of set-up, and some maintenance.  I recently re-vamped my own privacy settings following a very useful guide I stumbled upon last week, and If you’re like me, and love living in the social age of media, but want to make sure what you share is shared with those you intend to, then take the time, visit those settings and make sure they are to your liking.  

I, like most of us, started the Facebook privacy settings by limiting those not so close ‘friends’ to the pre-set limited profile list, but after careful consideration I noticed it was way too limiting, and wanted to customize these settings to my liking, determining exactly who would see what, depending on the pre-set limits the list they belong to was set to.  Lists are the simplest way I’ve found to manage my Facebook privacy, even allowing you to determine, post by post, which list it should go out to and who to omit.  

In the spirit of sharing I give to you the guide I used to set my lists up, set by step, offered up by a fellow blogger for the Engadget site.

I started by creating three lists, like on the above linked post. The first one is reserved for my closest friends, and mind you this list has no limits, everything is open to the people in this list so obviously only those you trust the most would go on this.  They will see everything you post and that is posted about you (pictures others tag with your name etc).  The second list is a bit more limited, this one includes all those friends you know, but don’t know that well, and you can limit these from seeing your personal information, things like your address and phone number/personal email, as well as those infamous tags of unapproved pictures or videos you’d rather they not automatically see.  The third list is the most limiting, and this one you reserve for those you’d rather not share that much with, and would include limiting what pictures, what posts, and whether or not they can comment or post something on your wall.

I found the list process so useful, I even created lists for family members, work colleagues etc, so when I post something that is relevant to only those people, those are the only ones that will get it.

The Internet is an amazing tool, for sharing, research, learning – but it’s all up to you, what you share and who with, you have the power.