Facebook For Dummies, 8th Edition

Chapter 6

Understanding Privacy and Safety

IN THIS CHAPTER

Understanding who can see what on Facebook

Changing your privacy

Navigating and using Facebook’s many privacy features and pages

When people talk about privacy online — and on Facebook in particular — we 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. Most likely, you'll never deal with these issues, although we do touch on them at the end of this chapter.

On the other end of the spectrum are issues we usually categorize as “awkward social situations” — for example, posting a photo of your perfect beach day that your coworkers can see on a day when you called in sick (not that you would ever do something like that). You’ll probably deal with issues at the awkward end of the spectrum most often. Somewhere in-between are questions about encountering hate speech, strangers seeing your stuff, and security issues such as spamming and phishing. All these privacy-related topics are legitimate, and all are ones you can learn how to deal with and control.

Regardless of where on the spectrum your question ...