Your birthday is the first piece of info collected when you sign up, and it’s great getting birthday wishes from friends and family when it appears in their newsfeed. But while Facebook is sending you balloons and funny memes, your birthday is now public knowledge. It seems harmless, but when you call your bank or other institution, what’s the first question they ask to verify your identity? Your birthday! Some password recovery systems even ask questions like “which high school did you go to?”, assuming this is the knowledge that only you would know. Except…you’ve just publicly shared it on Facebook. Whoops!
We’ve all heard stories of people who’ve lost their jobs after less-than-wholesome pictures or statements have gone public. If you have a reputation to keep, you definitely don’t want pictures from last weekend’s private party showing up, especially if you really let your hair down. While you can’t control what others do with photos they take of you, you can control whether or not you’re tagged in them.
Fortunately, there are settings in Facebook that allow you to control who sees what information and what happens when you’re tagged. Despite what you may have heard or seen floating around in a Facebook share hoax, you do have complete control over your Facebook privacy, and it’s easy to adjust.
How to Check and Adjust Your Facebook Privacy Settings
1. See what your account looks like to an outsider
From your Facebook homepage, click your name on the blue bar at the top of the page. Click the three dots next to ‘View Activity Log’ and then select ‘View as…’. You can look at what your page looks like to the public (people who aren’t your friends on Facebook) or even a specific person!
2. Run a quick privacy checkup
Click the question mark in the top right corner and choose ‘privacy checkup’.
Think about what you really need to share – do people need to know the YEAR of your birth or just your birthday? Your friends will still get the notification, and you’ll still get the balloons.
3. Check the list of apps
While you are reviewing the privacy, make sure to delete apps that should have access to your profile. I found over 50 apps to delete – not even sure why I had them all there!
4. Edit advanced privacy
While the checkup covers the most obvious info, you can go much deeper. Click the V-shaped dropdown to the right of the question mark. Go to settings and choose privacy.
5. Adjust timeline and tagging
In the privacy settings, you can explicitly control who can tag you, who can see or share the tagged content, and what shows up on your newsfeed.
