Social media is designed for you to share but you should take care to set the privacy levels so you know who can see your information and postings.

Basic Privacy Settings

In Facebook on a PC, click on the top right menu item and select Settings then Privacy and you should see as below.

You choose who can see your postings, profile etc. The choices are Public, Friends, Specific Friends or Only Me.

Set “Who Can Contact Me”. The choices are Everyone or just Friends and Friends of Friends

Set “Who Can Lookup Me Up” and whether you want search engines outside of Facebook to find your profile.

That’s all quite straightforward. Basically you decide if you want the world to see what you put on Facebook or restrict it to friends.

The Audience Selector Tool

When creating a new post on your timeline, there is a drop down box which allows you to determine the audience for the post. You can choose Public , Friends, Friends Except (you pick which friends to exclude), Specific Friends (you pick which Friends to include) or Only Me.

You’ll find an audience selector tool most places you share status updates, photos and other things you post. Click the tool and select who you want to share something with.

The selector tool remembers the audience you shared with the last time you posted something and uses the same audience when you share again unless you change it.

Profile

To set or modify your profile information, click the ‘Update Info button on bottom right of your header photo. You can then set a new header photo, profile photo, location, family and relationships, schools, professional skills etc.

Everyone can see this public information, which includes your name, profile picture, cover photo, gender, username, user ID, and networks.

To see what your profile looks like to other people, use the View As tool.

Timeline

Only you and your friends can post to your Timeline. When you make a post you can set the audience. When other people post on your Timeline, you can control who sees it by choosing the audience of the Who can see what others post on your Timeline setting.

As you edit your info, you can control who sees what by using the audience selector.

Privacy Check

Facebook lets you make a quick health check on privacy settings. Click on the question mark (or maybe a padlock symbol) on top right and select Privacy Check.

1) Posts – As explained below, this will explain how to control your privacy settings for every post.

2) Apps – Who sees your activity within APPS from outside suppliers

3) Profile – How much personal information is to be shown

Use Facebook wisely and don’t give any information to people without considering the possible consequences first.

Do enter your email address and click on the subscribe button on top right to keep up to date with new posts.