Facebook “privacy”
Like so many lawyers, I am torn about using Facebook. I initially began using it because it was a cool new gadget and I’m a dweeb — oh, and to stay in touch with friends and family. My goal has been to try to keep Facebook purely personal (and private) and use Linkedin for professional connections. It isn’t always easy. Realistically, Facebook is a social networking website. Its very foundation is sharing with others by the widest medium possible: the Internet. How does privacy jive with this?
Well, you can strictly limit your information on Facebook (including the fact that you are even on Facebook) to just the friends (connections) you choose. That is an important fact. But where I ran into difficulty was in trying to keep my friends, but limit what some of them saw. The fact is, while I do want to stay in touch with my connections, I don’t feel the need to stay in touch with some as often as others.
Was I successful limiting what some of my friends could view? Mostly, but not 100%. If you want to try this, go to Settings/Privacy Settings/Profile and then go down the list of everything you see, choosing “customize” where possible. Options are to let everyone on Facebook see something, or just friends of friends, or only friends. Plus, there is the added option of customizing by individual. After each setting you change, be sure to click “Save Changes.” Don’t change a bunch and then click it, or it may not work. Also go to Settings/Application Settings and edit those as well. It’s tedious. You can type a friend’s name in a field in Facebook settings to see how that friend views your page. That’s how you will know if you were successful or not. Good luck!