5 Vital Privacy Settings to Consider Thoroughly in Facebook: Options to Set or Reset as Needed

Introduction

If Facebook is one of the social networking sites you want to build a basic and small Catholic social network, then here are a few suggestions and tips to help you build that network with permanence and stability. These suggestions and tips relate to the Privacy Settings of your account at Facebook. When Facebook's membership grew to approximately 350 million as of December 2009, the site has formalized well the privacy settings needed by many of its members. The suggestions and tips listed below can lessen the security risks of your account with Facebook.com.

Privacy Settings

As you log in to your account, move your cursor to the Settings tab. There is a drop down menu that will appear. Move your cursor to the Privacy Settings option, click on it, and a page will be presented with five important links:

• 1. Profile Information
• 2. Contact Information
• 3. Applications and Websites
• 4. Search
• 5. Block List

1. Profile Information

The Profile Information page controls who can see your profile, and who can post to your wall. Under this Profile Information setting, you have 5 options which you can set: "Everyone", "Friends and Networks", "Friends of Friends", "Only Friends", and "Customize". Since your goal is to build a small Catholic social network, then one suggestion is to set your Religious and Political Views to "Friends of Friends". Or, if you used the Catholic schools you attended or graduated from as "Networks", then you can also use the setting "Friends and Networks". Try not to use the "Everyone" setting, because this can solicit "friend requests" from people you do not know who are selling a product or service in Facebook.

2. Contact Information

The Contact Information page controls who can contact you on Facebook, and who can see your contact information and email. In this page, there are three settings (among many others) which are important, especially if you have a small Catholic web site or blog you registered with your account in Facebook. These settings are:

• Website
• Add me as a friend
• Send me a message

3. Applications and Websites

In the Applications and Websites page, you can control what information is made available to Facebook-enhanced applications and websites. This privacy setting refers to the third-party applications that are used in Facebook - games and applications like Farmville, Farmtown, Fishville, etc. In this Applications and Websites page, there is a link to a page where you can control "what your friends can share about you through applications and websites". If your friend uses a Facebook-enhanced application that you do not use, you can control the following information the application can access. The following are the information details that you can control in the use of Facebook-enhanced applications:

• Personal info (activities, interests, etc.)
• Status updates
• Online presence
• Website
• Family and relationship
• Education and work
• My videos
• My links
• My notes
• My photos
• Photos and videos of me
• About me
• My birthday
• My hometown
• My religious and political views

4. Search

The Search page controls who can see your search result on Facebook, and in the search engines. As you are presented with this page, Facebook opens a dialog with this announcement:

"Worried about search engines? Your information is safe. There have been misleading rumors recently about Facebook indexing all your information on Google. This is not true. Facebook created public search listings in 2007 to enable people to search for your name and see a link to your Facebook profile. They will still only see a basic set of information."

In this Search page, there are basically two options which you can set: Facebook Search Results (who can see your search result on Facebook) and Public Search Results. For best security and privacy, it would be good to set Facebook Search Results to "Friends of Friends", and leave the box (which says "allow") unchecked next to Public Search Results option.

5. Block List

The Block List page controls who can interact with you on Facebook. This page can be handy for those whose networks are large, and contain many settings for "Everyone". For basic and small Catholic social networks, this may not be necessary as you can always choose your friends. We only need to remind ourselves that, "prevention is better than cure".

Summary and conclusion

You can reset the options you have set when situations arise that call for a different type of setting. If for instance you have decided to slow down the growth of your network, then you can reset your privacy settings to "Only Friends". What is important is that you monitor well, diligently, and carefully your Facebook privacy settings account, so that you can build a social network that will produce a Web environment that is progressive, profitable, and productive. But most of all, you can join the Church's mission on the Net to produce a culture of respect, dialogue, friendship, and peace.

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