Facebook is the world's largest social network with more than 400 million people chatting and sharing their lives, but we know from your emails that sometimes Facebook can cause problems for you.
With so many applications, external services and friend requests to deal with, keeping the right information private is becoming even more important.

Control what other people can see on Facebook

Facebook has been redesigned in 2010 to include a new set of Privacy controls to help you manage the information you share with the world. Facebook wants you to share EVERYTHING with everyone! Bear this in mind when you are adding external services or new applications. Always double check the Padlock symbol on any update or request from an application to post updates. Make sure it is posting using your preferred privacy setting.

Bullying UK would always recommend that you limit the information you share to "Friends Only". Be careful of the "Friend of Friends" option. This may seem like a small group of people but in reality anyone connected to a friend of yours will be able to see your updates, you can't control who your friends connect with!

The Facebook Privacy Screens

Facebook has a lot of options to help you control who can see your information. You can access the Privacy screen by first hovering your mouse pointer over ACCOUNT then selecting PRIVACY from the drop down menu.
Facebook provides the following options to lock down each type of information you have given them, not all options will be available, it just depends on the type of information being shared.

The options are:
Everyone
- This will allow everyone in the world to see information flagged with this option.
Friend of Friends
-Only your friends and their friends will be able to see this information. Be warned it's not as small a circle of people as you may think.
Only Friends
-We would suggest this is the setting you will want to use most often as it provides control over your updates but still allows you to socialise with people you know.
No One
-Use this to make sure certain information is shared with NO ONE
Customise
-Select individual people to share information with. Useful if you want to share your email address with only one person or a very small group of people.

Here is a run down of every screen and every option in Privacy. To the right side of each option you will find a drop down menu. Click it and you will see the relevant options mentioned above:

Facebook Profile Information screen

Your Profile information hold details about you as a person, your name, what you like and don't like as well as photographs and relationships. We would recommend all this information is kept to Friends Only.

About me
- About Me refers to the About Me description in your Profile
Personal info
- Interests, activities, favourites
Birthday
- Date and year of birth
Religion
-Religious and political views
Family and relationship
- Family members, relationship status, interested in and looking for.
Education and work
- Schools, universities and workplaces
Photos and videos of me
- Photos and videos you've been tagged in
Photo albums
- Who can access your Photo Albums
Posts by me
- Default setting for status updates, links, notes, photos and videos you post
Allow friends to post on my Wall
-Will you allow friends to post messages to your Facebook page
Posts by friends
- Control who can see posts by your friends on your Profile
Comments on posts
- Control who can comment on posts you create

Your Contact Information on Facebook

How people get in touch with you off Facebook. BE VERY CAREFUL about what information you share here. We would strongly recommend setting all this information to NO ONE. This will mean you have to tell someone how to contact you off Facebook. This will help to keep you safer and control who has your contact information. Ask yourself why do they need to contact you off Facebook? It's the world's largest social network after all.

IM screen name
- Your Username on Yahoo or MSN or another Messenger network
Mobile phone
- Your Mobile Phone number, be careful who you share this with!
Other phone
- Same for this
Current address
- Be very careful who you share this with. We would recommend NO ONE!
Website
- The address of your personal blog or website
Home town/city
- Where you live
Add me as a friend
- Control who can add you as a friend from search results and from your Profile
Send me a message
- Control who can send you a message from search results and from your Profile

Facebook Applications and Websites Privacy

Facebook has lots of applications written by third parties (not Facebook). Be careful what information you allow these applications to access, it's very easy to give away more than you realise. With Facebook connect you can login at external websites using your Facebook login. Again be careful what information you allow these sites to access and what privileges they have to update your account.

Many applications and external sites like to send a message into your feed about the actions you take with them..make sure you are 100% happy for others to see those actions.
What you share
- Learn about what you share when using applications and websites
What your friends can share about you
- Control what your friends can share about you when using applications and websites
Blocked applications
- Block specific applications from accessing your information and contacting you
Ignore application invitations
- Ignore application invitations from specific friends
Activity on applications and games dashboards
Control who can see your activity in the Friends' Recent Activity, Friends' Applications and Friends' Games sections of these pages

Facebook Search

Facebook has more than 400 million users, and recently Facebook gave people the option to allow anyone in the world to Search for Facebook Members. This setting is OFF by default and we would strongly recommend you DO NOT turn it on, doing so will expose your name and some personal details to the world's search engines like Google Search and Microsoft Bing.

You can also control if your profile appears in the localised Facebook user search system, again we would suggest limiting this feature off.
Facebook search results
- Who can see your search result on Facebook
Public search results
- This setting only allows search engines to access your publicly available information and any information you set to Everyone. This does not include anything you've shared with just your friends or friends of friends (see preview).

Block List

This shows you any Facebook users you have blocked from seeing all your information. You can add new users or remove users from being blocked using this screen.
You can block a user by entering their name or email address, they will then be prevented from seeing any of your updates in future.

Preview your Facebook Profile

At any time you can use this option to see what information different types of privacy settings will let people see, very handy to double check you have the settings the way you want them.