The introduction to Me and My Web Shadow said that the book would probably be out of date before it was even published, and I wasn’t joking. It also said that Facebook was probably the most important place to start looking at what information about you is private and what is available for anyone to see.

In the past few weeks there has been a lot of conversation online about the rights and wrongs of Facebook’s privacy settings. The New York Times published this visual representation of the complex nature of them. It has made many people feel vulnerable and anxious about controlling the personal information that Facebook stores and shares. To try and tackle this, Facebook has rolled out some new tools for managing those settings – claiming that this is Making Control Simple.

This article talks you through these new top level privacy controls and should act as an update to the Facebook chapter in Me and My Web Shadow. Hope it’s useful.

Three new ways to control your privacy on Facebook

If you click on the Account tab on your Facebook page and then select the Privacy Settings option you will see a page that looks like this.

There are three new ways you can manage your personal information from this page.

1. The content that you upload or create on Facebook – who sees what?

You can now set a single, over-riding rule for who sees the stuff that you publish on Facebook – from pictures to email addresses.

The options are (from the most open to the most private):

• Everyone
• Friends of friends
• Friends only
• Recommended
• Custom

The first three options are self-explanatory. By selecting one of these you apply that rule to everything that you can publish or share, or that other people can see or comment on via your profile pages or news stream items.

The fourth option – the Recommended option – will allow:

• everyone to see your status updates, your pictures, your likes, your comments and notes and your family and friend details
• friends of friends to see any pictures or videos that you are tagged in, your religious and political views and your birthday
• only your friends will be able to comment on your stuff or see your contact details such as your email, phone number and IM details

The Customise option allows you to set different settings for each of those elements, including restricting that information so that only you can see it.

If you are concerned about your privacy and want to make sure that no one that you don’t know can see your stuff, then a single click on the Friends only option will lock everything down.

2. What information do people see about you when they are searching for you in the Facebook directory (or Google)?

The second area of information to take control of is what’s available to those who are searching for you – either within Facebook, or beyond.

At the top of the Privacy Setting page there is now an option to view Basic Directory Information. If you click the View Settings link you will see this page:

From here you can decide the following things:

• Who can search for you on Facebook – this over-rides all of the other settings, so if you select anything other than Everyone here you introduce strong restrictions on who can find you at all on Facebook.
• Who can send you a friend request – again, unless you select Everyone here, the people who can connect with you on Facebook are completely restricted to those who are already your friends, or those who are  a friend of a friend.
• Who can send you messages – use this to stop those you don’t know you sending you messages other than friend requests.
• Who can see your list of friends – use this to control whether people you aren’t yet connected with can see your other connections.
• Who can see details of your employment, your education, or your location
• Who can see the things you Like or Groups or Pages you interact with in a directory listing

As with the other privacy settings – the options are: everyone, friends of friends, friends only or even just you.

If you select Everyone, this information can appear in Google as well as in Facebook directory searches, so consider carefully how much information you want to share with the world beyond your name and the option to connect with you on Facebook.

3. The information you share with other organisations through “apps” and tools

Facebook is now the biggest social network on the planet, and that makes it a very attractive place for organisations and marketers to try and get your attention and connect with you.

The development of “apps” has become an important part of how Facebook works, but it’s also the place where your personal data is most likely to end up in the hands of people that you don’t know and may not wish to trust.

On the bottom left corner of the Privacy Settings page there is now the option to Edit your settings for Applications and Websites.

If you want to completely lock down your privacy here, you can now Turn off all platform applications with a single click. That means that all of the quizzes, games, connections to other social networks and so on that you may have added to your profile over time will be switched off.

Remember, though, if you use this option and then in the future add a new app, you will be required to re-activate the apps platform. So at that point it will be worth just taking a moment to revisit this page to check what you are opening back up.

Alternatively, you can use the Remove unwanted or spammy applications option to delete those apps that you no longer wish to use.

Matt Zuckerberg at Facebook said in May: “I am pleased to say that with these changes the overhaul of Facebook’s privacy model is complete. If you find these changes helpful, then we plan to keep this privacy framework for a long time. That means you won’t need to worry about changes. (Believe me, we’re probably happier about this than you are.)”

But be assured that there will be further updates to the Me and My Web Shadow on this topic as and when Facebook rolls out new tools for managing your privacy.