Me, my friends and relatives, often discuss the subject of privacy on the internet. With social media constantly expanding its user base, as everybody and their mother, grandmother, kids, dogs and cats are getting a Facebook account, it has become as normal and natural as eating.

You can put us social media users into many different categories. To name just a few, there are the people who:

1. is concerned about their privacy, but has everything set to Public, because they don’t know how to change it. (mmkay, fair).
2. posts anything on Facebook as if they were re-arranging their fridge magnets – for their eyes only – though settings are set to Public.
3. is paranoid and has everything set to Only me, even their own posts. (certainly not for the like-hunters!). If ever liking, or commenting a post, they’ll check first if the post is public, or has limited audience.
4. is semi-concerned about privacy, and shares only a few posts with friends.

And many many more, of course…

As I’m often getting the question of how to then change the settings on Facebook, and make it more Private or Secure, I figured I would make a walkthrough.

First things first

On Facebook you have 3 different categories when selecting privacy levels, they go like this:

Public – Anyone can see your posts, whether they’re your friend, a friends friend, or a complete stranger who Google’d you… Or stalker.

Friends – Only your friends can see your posts.

Only Me – Only you will see your posts.

Privacy settings on Facebook

Privacy Settings (Part 1)

To check and change the privacy settings of your Facebook account, follow the arrows as shown below. Click the arrow down, then click Settings.

On the left hand side, choose Privacy.

This opens the window below.

This is divided into 3 different categories; Who can see my stuff? – Who can contact me? – Who can look me up?

Who can see your future posts? – As you can see, I’ve set mine to Friends, because, although I’m paranoid, Only Me got a bit boring… and sad. #Lonely

Who can see your friends list? – Mine is set to Custom, as I want just a select few to be able to see who I’m friends with.

Limit Past Posts – This is a very good tool to change the settings of past posts, if you’ve changed “Who can see your future posts“.

Who can send me friend requests? – has also been set to Friends of friends, as I very rarely meet someone who I have no relation to at all, and moreover want to have on my Facebook. (This actually never happened). This setting certainly helps getting rid of annoying friend requests of questionably “pretty” girls, whom I have somehow attracted and they suddenly want to be best buds (I have written an article expanding on this topic here).

Who can look you up using the email address/phone number you provided? – Your email and phone number is by far too easy to come by. I use my phone number at work, and hundreds of people have my phone number. There’s no need for them to snoop around on my Facebook profile as well, right? (stick to LinkedIn, guys, there are no silly pictures of me there!). Friends only!

Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile? – No. No need to have Google be a snitch on this too.

Privacy Settings (Part 2)

Thought Timeline and Tagging is not exactly under the Privacy category. I still think it’s worth having a look at, though I’ll just cover it quickly.

So this category covers, who can see posts you’re tagged in by others, and who can see what is posted on your timeline. For example, I have Review posts friends tag you in before they appear on your timeline? set to On. Which means, if John tags me in a picture from the crazy party last Friday, and wants to share it on my wall, to all my friends. I have a chance to say “No thank you, John, today I have my dignity back – Please remove it from Facebook altogether.”

Privacy Settings (Part 3)

In this part two, you will have to navigate to your personal Facebook account. From here, click the About button as seen below.

When hovering the mouse over the phone number, birthday and location text, a link with Edit your contact and basic info pops up. Click it!

Now you can change a few settings on your profile. It is also just an easy way to get an overview of who can see your phone number, email and birthday.
Again, hovering the mouse over the text, will surface this Edit button, to change the privacy setting.

Currently, I’m showing only my birthday to my Facebook friends.
The ones I want to have my number, have my number. Same goes for my address. (Don’t make it too easy to find you – a good old game of hide’n’seek never hurt anyone!)

But wait, there’s more… Apps?!

If you’re the type of person, who likes to just use the Facebook login option on apps, games and services online, but never really wandered into the Apps settings on Facebook, you might be in for a surprise. I’ll give you an example below. But first, click the Apps link on the left hand side.

This will show you everything your Facebook account is tied to. Games on Facebook, games on your phone, software, websites, plugins, you name it.

Hover your mouse over an app, to surface the pen icon, where it says Edit Settings, to see the privacy settings of the app. Click it.

This will open something similar to the one below.

As you can see, Hay Day is pulling the following info:
Mandatory – Name, profile picture, +21 years old, male and other public info. (It’s mandatory, so – you don’t share this – you don’t play. Simple as that).
Optional – Friends list, email address, birthday, current city.
The optional ones are usually agreed to, by default, by yourself, when you log in with Facebook.

You will probably realize that you don’t even remember half of the apps you have listed in here. If you still use the app, I would still suggest to untick the optional settings and click Save.

How do I delete this then?

Hover the mouse over the X, where it says Remove to start the deletion.

For example FarmVille 2 will give you the possibility to delete all your posts, photos and videos that were posted on Facebook. Some of these apps are spitting out more posts on your Facebook wall, than a LEGO factory is producing bricks, per hour… (Thank God for the unfollow button!)

Click Remove and your headache is over… Right? Noooot quite!

As it also states in the message box above; FarmVille 2 may still have the data you shared with them. Alright, so in order to get rid of this. You’ll need to go back to Edit Settings of the app, as before. Go to the bottom of the page, and you’ll find the message, as shown below.

In the blurred part is a User ID number, which you will have to copy, and in this case, send over to the folks at FarmVille, letting them know that you’d be very pleased if they would delete your data.

So long,

Brian