PhilMur's thoughts on biz/tech/money/life

1/25/2010 Update:  Since this original post, Facebook has made a good deal of changes to its security settings.  The New York Times wrote a great article on how to check the important Facebook security settings now.  Click here to read their article.

Most people do not realize that by default, Facebook shows a decent amount of information to individuals who search for, and find your profile on Facebook.  By default, this includes your profile picture, your friend list, links to add you as a friend or send a message, and pages of which you are a fan.

To change these settings, hover over the “Settings” label on right side of the blue banner at the top of the screen in Facebook, and choose “Privacy Settings” from the dropdown menu under settings.  THEN click on “Search” to tweak search-related settings.  That will take you to the screen as partially shown below, where you can make changes as you wish.

You can also limit your search visibility altogether with the dropdown field labeled accordingly.

Many people sign up on Facebook without realizing anyone visiting the website can search for them and see some information about them.  The idea that all information in Facebook is visible only to your friends is not entirely accurate; some information is visible to non-”friends” who search for your proile, as controlled by the settings on this screen.

I hope this is helpful to those Facebook users out there, like me, who prefer for the site to be a private community for friends and doesn’t want most of their information publicly visible to individuals on the Internet who may find me.