Saturday, November 22, 2008

My Facebook Privacy Rules of Thumb

As a highly experienced facebooker (all of 2 weeks now), I decided that I needed to write down the privacy rules of thumb that I am currently using to ensure that I don't end up like some the CMS school teachers:
  1. I never accept as a friend anyone that I don't know.
  2. I divide up the people that I do accept as friends into two groups: acquaintences and everyone else
  3. I make every privacy setting to be "Friends Only" and I exclude acquaintances (howto) from certain elements, most importantly pictures of my children.
  4. I never post anything to facebook, that I would not want those in my inner circle to know.
I may refine or add to these as I learn more about FB.

Update: If you're one of my facebook friends, and I've placed you in (what I used to call) the outer circle, please don't take offense. My goal is not to say anything at all about you, but rather to recognize that you and I are more of acquaintances than friends. I seriously doubt that anyone who's in (what I used to call) my outer circle would think that we are more than just acquaintances.

Hmmm... maybe I should relabel that group. Instead of calling them the outer circle, I should call them acquaintences. Think I will.

Update 2: Here are the places in FB where there are security settings that I think are important:
  1. Settings -> Privacy Settings
  2. Profile -> Settings -> applications settings page (Edit each application and change how it can be viewed)
(I note this here because I keep forgetting how to get to #2.)

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I've been getting a lot of friends from facebook starting to read my blog. I'm glad of that. I look forward to comments, critiques, etc. But please do not reference me or any of my family and friends by name. Here's why.