Facebook For Dummies, 5th Edition

Chapter 5

Privacy and Safety on Facebook

In This Chapter

• Navigating the many privacy options on Facebook
• Protecting yourself online and on Facebook
• Deciding what to share and when

When people talk about privacy online — and on Facebook in particular — I like to remind them that there's a spectrum of privacy concerns. On one end of the spectrum are true horror stories of predators approaching minors, identity thefts, and the like. Hopefully (and most likely), you will never deal with these issues although I do touch on them at the end of this chapter. On the other end of the spectrum are issues I usually categorize as “awkward social situations” — for example, posting a photo of your perfect beach day that your co-workers can see on a day when you called in “sick” (not that you would ever do something like that). Somewhere in between are questions about strangers seeing your stuff and security issues like spamming and phishing. All these privacy-related topics are legitimate, though you'll probably deal with the awkward end of the spectrum more often than anything else.

Regardless of where on the spectrum your particular question or problem falls, however, you should be able to use your privacy settings to make things better. I can't promise that you'll be able to prevent 100 percent of the situations that make you annoyed or uncomfortable or leave you with that sort of icky feeling, but I can tell you that you should be able to reduce how often you feel that way. The goal is ...