How to properly set your Facebook Page for privacy

Alot of us out there want to be able to have our Facebook page work in two ways... one view to be the "everything" view for close friends and family, and the other view to be "restricted" to non-close friends and other facebook types. It takes a little work, but you can get your page to be that customized in Facebook, so that only the people you want will see WHAT you want, and you can actually use your Facebook page to display all those things you wanted. You can talk about your life and dreams and close thoughts and feel good knowing that only the people you WANT to know this stuff actually see it!!!

Facebook allows alot of granualarity in how it lets your page and private information be viewable. By default, Facebook allows everyone to see everything. This can be too wide open and let people you don't care to know about your daily life privy to those details. But FB allows you to let your page and info be viewable to those you want and NOT to those you don't.

These are the steps you should take to get your Facebook page setup so that those you want can see and those you don't.... don't. It takes some work, and you'll need to invest a little time, but in the end, you'll have a system in place that allows you to add people in the right places so that those you want can see and those who don't.... don't.

The real key to privacy starts with your Friends and putting them into lists. The lists are what is going to give you the power to decide who has the ability to see what. We'll start by having 3 basic lists (personally, I have like 10 lists). You should have a list for close friends, for family, and for Others. Now, go to your friends section in FB and start adding them to one of the lists. ALL your friends should be in one of the lists. This takes some time, but its VERY important. The more granular you get, the finer your control, but it also adds that much "admin" to the process because there are more items to be in control of.

Now, you've put all your friends into lists. Go to your Settings page and then go to your profile page. Here is where you're going to set the permissions to control who see's what on your page. I'm not going to go into detail about which options to choose for each section cause that would take forever, but what I will tell you is this... permissions to the various sections of your profile will fall into 3 categories, depending on the type of permissions allowed by that particular section of FB...

• NO ONE can see but me, with exception to ONLY these lists (example, close friends and family)
• EVERYONE can see EXCEPT these lists (example, Others)
• Only the chosen lists can see (example, close friends)

Based on these 3 styles of permissions, you'll decide what type of access you want.

Photo's have their own section for permissions, they also fall into the same 3 permission levels.

A HUGE trick to remember, when you're done setting permissions, is to go back to the settings\My Profile page and at the top you'll see a section that says "check how your profile looks to someone else". It's here that you can type in someones name and you can see how your profile will look to that person. This is extremely helpful when you want to see if a particular person can or cannot see your page.

I'm tired and don't want to write anymore, but that's really the gist to locking down your FB page. The lists are the key, without having your friends in lists, you can't get the granular control you are looking for. But with those lists, you'll have all the power. And don't forget about the tool to look at your page like someone else, this is huge for testing your permissions.

Have fun, ask me questions, take care!