Yes it’s fun to share information about ourselves on Facebook as well as to see photos of friends’ kids’ ballet recitals and relatives’ newborn babies but we should all be a little paranoid when it comes to safeguarding the information that we share on the internet. After all, cybercrooks are just a mouse click away and even the most inactive Facebook user has encountered some of these alleged Facebook game scams.

Facebook has gotten a lot of flak for all sorts of different reasons (don’t even get us started on what happens to your Facebook account after you die) but we’ve got to admit it: it’s a very useful tool for networking (business or otherwise), for finding out which sushi place serves the best uni sushi on such short notice, and for spreading useful news or articles.

So how do we maintain some semblance of an internet social life and safeguard the personal info we are sharing over cyberspace at the same time? We’ve come up with our top 10 tips to help you protect your privacy on Facebook.

1. Set Your Wall Privacy & Be Careful When Posting Status Updates

Click Profile > Options (Under your Status box) > Settings.

Control who gets to see your status updates by choosing “You + Friends,” “Just You” (which defeats the purpose of updating your status in the first place, unless you’re using Facebook to remind yourself to buy broccoli for dinner) or “Just Friends.” You can also control who sees your friend’s posts through this setting. Just in case you have allowed everyone on your friends’ list to see your status updates, be careful when posting comments about your schedule, your destination or your whereabouts. Avoid this type of status update for obvious reasons: “I will be taking the 8:45 am flight to the Bahamas tomorrow and will be back on the 5th of January. I will be missing my poodle Mushka who will be staying with our neighbors since nobody will be home to take care of her (bummer!). See you all soon after my looong vacation!” We want to think that our friends and acquaintances have our best interests at heart but we have no control over who they relay this sort of happy news to.

2. Create Friends’ List

Go to Home > Create New List (left sidebar of your Facebook homepage).

Or go to Friends > Create List (bottom of left sidebar list).

Click ‘More’ if you do not see the ‘Create List’ Option below your default list. This will come in handy when customizing who gets to see which photo album in your profile and who gets to have access to certain personal info in your account. You can name your sets of friends whatever you like – they will not be able to see your list names.

3. Customize Your Photo Album Privacy

Click Profile > Photos > Album Privacy.

Remember the list that you just created? You can restrict which set of friends sees which group of photos by customizing the dropdown menu at the right side of each photo album. You can even narrow down the accessibility of your photos via the “except these people” tool. This is a good exercise to follow to ensure that nth degree friends, your boss and colleagues, your parents-in-law and acquaintances do not have access to your most intimate and personal photos. Please take note that Fan Pages and Groups (as they also appear in your Friends’ list) also share the same access to your information as your friends so it’s a good idea to put them in a separate category and restrict their access to your photos. Another caveat: your Profile Pictures, by default, are always visible to all of your friends.

4. Set Profile Privacy

Go to Settings > Privacy Settings > Profile.

Customize who can see your profile as well as whether people can see videos and photos tagged of you. Why is this important? At one time, I’m sure you have had the chance to look at the personal photos of friends of friends (even friends of friends of friends) who do not have solid privacy settings. Unfortunately in Facebook, it is very easy to download or copy a photo from someone else’s account (try right-clicking on a photo of a friend and you’ll see the Save As option – it’s not a protected content, surprise, surprise). You would not want people who you don’t know have the power to swipe pictures of you from your Facebook account and maliciously spread them through the internet. Also, by controlling who sees pictures and videos tagged of you, you save yourself from the humiliation of your entire social network seeing those ultra dorky pics of you in high school and those embarrassing video mishaps in college. Let’s face it, there are just some things in life we do not want the entire world to know.

5. Restrict Search Visibility

Go to Settings > Privacy Settings > Search.

You can customize your search visibility here and control what they see in your account in searches. For the paranoid, search visibility to no one but friends is ideal. For people who do not want to exclude people they might know from friends or family, being searchable to friends of friends should be okay. Changing search visibility from ‘Everyone’ to ‘Friends of Friends’ or ‘Friends Only’ is a good way to avoid getting friend requests from complete strangers (and hence, avoid the dilemma of whether to add someone whom you think might turn out to be a faint acquaintance twice removed from a very, very, very distant past).

6. Control News Feed and Wall Posts

Go to Settings > Privacy Settings > News Feed and Wall.

If you want to keep your posts on other people’s walls private, this is the setting to tweak. Also, through this setting, you may be able to control your own news feed that appears on other people’s Facebook timeline. For example, you may not want to announce to your entire Facebook network every time you comment on or like a note, a photo, a link or every single time you change your relationship status from single to married. See that edit applications link right there on the right side? We’ll take care of that in the two items that follow.

7. Ensure Non-Appearance in Ads

Go to Privacy > News Feed and Wall > Facebook Ads.

On Facebook ads, you will see that Facebook has classified two kinds of Advertisements on its site. One is the “Ads shown by third-party applications” and the other is the “Ads shown by Facebook”.

In an official blog post, Facebook dispels the rumor that it has agreed third party applications to use profile pictures without the account holder’s permission and has admitted that:

The advertisements that started these rumors were not from Facebook but placed within applications by third parties. Those ads violated our policies by misusing profile photos, and we already required the removal of those deceptive ads from third-party applications before this rumor began spreading.

A-ha. If you read closely, this means (clever wording, by the way) that errant third-party applications within Facebook HAVE misused profile photos despite Facebook’s policy of not allowing them to use these without the accountholder’s express authorization. What can you do to protect yourself?

Go to Privacy > News Feed and Wall > Facebook Ads. Choose “Allow ads on platform changes to show my information to – No One.” Facebook has highlighted that this is currently not allowed but in the event that they change their policy in the future, this setting controls whether you are allowing your information to be accessible to third party applications or ad networks within Facebook. So click “No One” ahead of the possibility – better safe than sorry.

Regarding Ads shown by Facebook, these allow “your friends to see stories about you that relate to the ads they’re seeing. Such stories will only be shown to friends, and will adhere to any privacy settings you’ve set for your account.” In addition:

Facebook runs advertisements from its own advertising system that let your friends know if you have a direct connection with a product or service, in the same way that your friends learn through your News Feed if you’re connected with another friend or an organization’s Facebook Page. For example, if one of your friends becomes a fan of a Page, you may see an ad with your friend’s profile photo next to it, indicating the action that friend has taken with that Page.

Eeek. I don’t know about you but just because I became a fan of hot pants doesn’t mean I’d want my profile pic next to an ad of hot pants (without the talent fee that I so richly deserve!). So go ahead and choose “Show my social actions in Facebook to – No one.”

8. Safeguard Your Information from Your Friends’ Apps

Go to Settings > Application Settings.

Okay, so you’ve been very careful in not adding any application to your Facebook account. This means you’re safe, right? Wrong. According to Facebook’s own Applications policy:

When a friend of yours visits an application or authorizes it, the information that the application can access includes your friend’s friend list and information about the people on that list. Thus it can access some information about you.

Yep, you read that right. For as long as your friends use Facebook apps, even if you do not use or install them, those apps can easily pull off information from your account. And remember all those fun quizzes you took on Facebook? Yup, they can collect information about you and your friends as well.

What to do? Go to Settings > Privacy Settings > Applications > Settings. Facebook, by default, allows you to share the information listed here to applications your friends use. Unclick all. Through this page you can also disable your friends’ permission to view your memberships on other websites through Facebook Connect and permission to allow Beacon websites to post stories to your profile.

9. Protect Yourself From Applications YOU Use

Go to Settings > Application Settings.

Change the default display from ‘Recently Used’ to ‘Authorized.’ This will allow you to see which applications you have allowed access to your and your friends’ Facebook information. Delete those applications you have no intention of using anyway or those that you have authorized but no longer use. Do the same for ‘Allowed to post’ (this allows the apps to post updates on your Wall) and ‘Granted additional permission.’ And remember to be a little discriminating the next time you find yourself about to hit the ‘Allow’ button when a very fun-looking application asks you whether you want to authorize it to access your information.

10. If Quitting, Deactivate AND Delete Your Account

Click Settings > Deactivate. Then click here to Delete.

Here’s one funny Newsweek article about a man’s decision to quit Facebook. Whatever your reasons for quitting Facebook, remember to delete, not just deactivate your account. Deactivation according to Facebook means,

If you deactivate your account, your profile and all information associated with it are immediately made inaccessible to other Facebook users. What this means is that you effectively disappear from the Facebook service. However, we do save your profile information (friends, photos, interests, etc.), so if you want to reactivate at some point, your account will look just the way it did when you deactivated. Many users deactivate their accounts for temporary reasons and expect their information to be there when they return to the service.

So if you have decided to terminate your Facebook account permanently, first, deactivate by going to Settings and choosing Deactivate. Then completely delete your account by going to Settings > Help and typing in ‘delete’ in the Search box or by clicking here (you should be logged in to your Facebook account).

If you suspect that your account has been hacked, Go to Settings > Help and follow the link there for hacked accounts and spam before deactivating.

Rule of Thumb

Remember that there are both advantages and disadvantages to using social networking tools such as Facebook. The key is in ensuring that you do not post information about yourself that you would otherwise not want to share with the whole world (even if the social media application says that your information is only shared to your network of friends) and by fully utilizing the privacy tools available to you.