Privacy on Facebook – Photos, Search & Blocking People

I’m currently on vacation until August 3rd.  This post has been auto-published for your enjoyment!

Well, my aromatherapy blog is slowly turning into a Facebook how-to blog! 

I’m going to outline a few ways that you can make your Personal Facebook Profile more private.

Photo Albums

When you create a new album, the privacy setting for who is able to view the album is set to “everyone” by default.  Make sure each time you create an album, you use the drop-down list to change this to “only Friends”  or “customise” (lets you choose specific Friends to share the album with, or specific Friends who may not see the album).

To check the status of your current albums, go to the “Photos” tab of your personal profile.  Just above the thumbnails of your photo albums, there is a link for Album Privacy.  Click it, and adjust the settings for each album.  You may be surprised to learn that all your albums have been public. 

It’s not likely that your pictures have been popping up in a search, but friends of friends (and their friends) may have been browsing through your albums.  How do they find your pictures, you ask?  Let’s say you tag Susie in one of your photos.  That photo will show up in her profile under “Pictures of Susie”.   Anyone who is a friend of Susie (but not of yours) can click on that photo and be taken to the album.  They will then be able to browse the album from there, or look at the rest of your albums if they are a real Nosey Rosie.  (If your album is set to private, they can still see the tagged picture of Susie, but they will get an error message if they try to browse).

 

Control who finds you in a Search

Click Settings >> Privacy Settings >> Search

You will have to decide who can find you in a search.  If you click “everyone”, your name and profile picture will be “clickable” and visible to everyone on Facebook.  This means if you comment on someone’s photo, ALL of their friends can see your picture and maybe click on your name and request to add you as Friend.  Same goes for when you post on someone’s Fan Page or on a Discussion forum.  You may also want to uncheck all the boxes that allow people who search for you to see certain things about you.

When I was new to Facebook, I was pretty liberal with the search settings because I wanted to make sure all my old friends could find me.  Now I have it set to “friends of friends” only.

Block People

There may be people who you absolutely do not want to be able to find you or see any of your activity on Facebook.  This could be as serious as an abusive ex-partner, or simply the annoying girl in the next cubicle at work.

Click Settings >> Privacy Settings

From there you will see a search box.  Enter the full name of the person you want to block.  From the search results, choose the correct person.  The person will not be notified that you have blocked them. 

Keep in mind that if you have mutual friends with this person, they will not be able to see what you comment on a mutual friend’s profile, and you will not be able to see what they write either.