As social media continues to grow and evolve, more and more people are concerned with managing their privacy settings. While you should never post anything that you wouldn’t want to be seen publicly, you can always do your best to manage who sees what so that your privacy, and the privacy of your friends is as protected as possible.
While you can manage your privacy, here are a few things to consider:
Assume that everything is public – you ultimately never know how content may travel online
It isn’t just your privacy it is also the privacy of your friends – if you post photos of your friends on Facebook, your privacy settings impact how pictures of them are seen
Facebook privacy is always changing – Facebook changes their privacy settings and terms of service regularly, so you can’t “set it and forget it”
It is complex to manage – as you can see in the image below – the privacy settings are fairly complex
Set expectations with your friends – Even if you manage your settings, things posted by your friends about you may have different settings – friends can check you in at locations and post photos of you. Let your friends know what is appropriate.
To get a handle on the current landscape, check out this amazing image posted in the WSJ with a guide to privacy (CLICK ON THE PICTURE TO MAKE IT LARGER)
