Hello Everyone:
I just thought I'd start this topic about Facebook privacy settings as I am seeing it come up on here and other forums A LOT where you have people who are on Facebook and then their JW family or friends are requesting to be friends with them and they don't know what to do!!
We are hearing it time and time again: you "friended" some JW family member, long-ago pioneer partner, etc, etc. That person then goes through your Facebook profile and sees everything you've written, your photos of you and your new life including holidays, partners, worldly activities, etc, etc. Then, all hell brakes loose and you are left wondering what to do??? Elders or a-hole family members snooping around, trying to make your life hell? There IS a solution, all the while maintaining your sanity and allowing you freedom to post what you want!!!
People, learning about every single detail of your privacy and account settings in the Facebook social network is to your own benefit!!!!
Believe it or not, you CAN have your cake AND eat it too!!! What do I mean?? Well, for starters in your privacy settings you can customize what people see.....EVERYBODY. From "everyone" to "friends", to "friends of friends", to "groups", etc, etc.
This is mainly accomplished by creating "groups" under your friends list. For instance, you can create a "JW Family" group than put your JW family into it, and then tweak the privacy settings so that they see NOTHING!!!! Hahaha!! Post all of the worldly holiday photos you want, the "JW Family" group will never see it!!! Just make sure the privacy settings are set correctly!!
There has been a lot of talk about people spying on people through their friends because they are friends also. Guess what? Adjust your privacy settings so that posts, photos, topics, profile info, etc, etc, is only available to "friends" and not "friends of friends" or "everyone". I believe you can also make all features privacy settings "group specific" so that only certain groups can see your photos, posts, etc, etc. You can get very specific about this stuff.
By not knowing the subtle nuances of Facebook's privacy settings you are only opening yourself up to a world of hurt. You can use these same settings to filter out co-workers who you may want to friend, but that who you don't want to see more private photos, posts, etc. Same with your application or Farmville friends. Just create the "Game Friends" group under your friend list, place them in there, and adjust the privacy settings so that they can only see your game notifications, nothing else. You could theoretically have thousands of people in such a folder helping with your games and apps, all the while they know NOTHING of your private life because they can't see it!!!!!
If anyone else would like to post some tips and tricks of keeping Facebook private, all the while "friending" people in order to not make yourself look like some isolationist, then by all means please respond and give us your tips.
- Wing Commander