Facebook 101
Understanding Facebook Privacy
Why is Facebook privacy important?
If you choose to share things publicly on Facebook, anyone with an account will be able to find and view your Facebook information, posts, and activity. This could impact your privacy in a variety of ways. For example:
- You could be sharing personal information you’d rather keep private, such as your birth date and address.
- Anything you post, such as photos, comments, and status updates, will be visible to people you don’t know.
- Embarrassing or unflattering posts could negatively affect your personal and professional reputation.
- Third-party websites and applications can access and share information from your Facebook account.
Understanding basic privacy settings
Whenever you share something on Facebook, you can choose who you'll share with. In the infographic below, you can see the most common sharing options, including Only me, Lists, Friends, and Public.
Let's take a look at these settings in action. For example, let's suppose you set all of the information on your Timeline to be visible only to friends. In this case, this is how your Timeline would appear to your friends:
By contrast, this is how it would appear to someone who isn't your friend on Facebook. Notice how most of the information is hidden, but the name, profile photo, and cover photo are still visible.
Sharing and privacy
Even if you customize your privacy settings, it's important to understand that the things you share on Facebook are visible to a lot of other people. This is because Facebook is designed to be more open and social than traditional communication tools.
For example, let's suppose you post a photo on a friend's Timeline. By default, that photo will be visible to all of your friends on Facebook, not just the person you shared it with. The photo will also be visible to anyone who is friends with your friend. This is one reason people enjoy using Facebook—it's easy to share with lots of people at the same time.
As long as you're somewhat careful about the things you share, Facebook doesn't pose a serious risk to your privacy. Before you share anything on Facebook, such as a comment or a status update, you'll need to consider how comfortable you are with many people seeing that information. If you wouldn't feel comfortable sharing something in a public place, you may not want to share it on Facebook either.
