Thursday, June 23, 2011

Tech::6 Easy Steps To Increase Your Privacy On Facebook

Organizing all of your Facebook friends into separate lists can help save you time and enhance the privacy of your posts and profile information.

You can set up friend lists for family, close friends, college pals, coworkers, industry friends, exes, and, well, whatever else you like. Then you will able to selectively share information using your Facebook account.

For starters, you'll be able to post messages that are viewable only to the lists you designate. What's more, you'll be able to adjust your privacy settings so that your profile details are accessible only to your chosen friend lists.

Six Really Easy Steps

Follow these six simple steps to create a friend list on Facebook. You can create up to 100 friend lists and each list can contain up to 1,000 friends. If you like, friends can appear on multiple lists.

On your Facebook homepage, click on the friends icon in the navigation bar running down the left column.
At the top right of the page, click on the icon with the pencil that reads "Edit Friends."
At the top right of the page, click on the icon with the plus sign that reads "Create A List."
A box will appear that reads "Create New List." In the text box below this, that reads, "Enter A Name," type in the name of the friend list you want to make, for example, "Industry".
You will see all of your friends appear in this box. Click on the names of the people you would like to add to the list you just made. Once you select a name, a check box will appear and the name and photo of the person you selected will be highlighted in blue. As you view all of your friends using the scroll bar at right, you can toggle at the top left of the box between "All" (which shows your entire friend network) and "Selected" (which shows the friends you have chosen to be to part of the list).
Click on the link labeled "Create List" to save the changes you made

Modifying Friend Lists

At any time, you can change the name of the list or change the people on the list by selecting the "Edit" link that appears to the right of the list name.

To view, add or delete friend lists, go to your friends page and click on the "Edit Friends" button. Your friend lists will appear in the column at left. Click on each list to modify or delete it.

Limiting Who Sees What

When you post a status update, you can make it visible only to a selected friend list. To do this, after you type your message into the status update box, click on the lock icon. Scroll down and select "Customize." Click on the drop-down menu under "Make This Visible To." Select "Specific People." Type in the name of the list you want to be able to see the status update.

To limit the people who can view your profile information to a friend list, click on "Account" at the top right of your screen.

Click on "Privacy Settings." Then click on "Customize Settings" at the bottom left of the main text box.

For each option listed at left you can select from the drop-down menu at right "Customize." Then, where you see "Make This Visible To", click the drop-down menu and select "Specific People." Type in the name of the selected friend list that you want to be able to view your profile.

Keep in mind that Facebook may continue to change its friend list interface in future. In the meantime, we suggest you forward this post to people you know who don't have any lists set up yet — this might help get them started.