I get a ton of questions on a regular basis about Facebook filters and privacy settings so I figured I’d write down some tips and best practices for you all. I have 500+ people on my friends list from all aspects of my life and very few people need to be privvy to every single thing I do, think, say or whatnot.

1. The first step in the process is creating Friends Filters. You can do this by clicking on your Friends tab at the top of the screen between Profile and Inbox. You should see an option to Create A New List.
- Click Create New List, this will open a pop-up window – Fill in the name for your list where it says Enter Name i.e. Work Filter, Family Filter etc.
- Click on the pictures of the people you want to include in this filter
- When You are done click Create List.

2. Now you have a list of people grouped together. You can now designate the filters in the Privacy Settings. Between your Name and the Logout button on the Top Navigation bar you will see Settings. If you mouse over it you get three options

2a. Account Settings gives you several options on the tab: – Settings, Networks, Mobile, Language, Payments can be ignored for now. – Notification is the big one here, you can set up how you are notified and by what for things like Sends me a message, Adds me as a friend, Posts on my Wall etc Go through this list and click on/off based on your preferences. I check this area once a month because everytime I look at my trash in gmail 90% is still facebook notifications. You can do this for every part of your profile and applications.

2b. Privacy Settings & Overview You have four options here, Profile, Search, Newsfeed/Wall & Applications.

Profile: You can customize your settings for Basic and Contact Information on this tab. This is also where having filters comes in handy. The default settings are Everyone, Only Friends, My Networks & Friends, Friends of Friends or Customize.
- Click Customize, now you customize each aspect of your profile based on what you want people to see or not see. If you select Only Friends and Except these people, you could include by name or one of the filters you created like Work Filter, Family Filter etc.

Search: this will be how people can search for your name and what they will see before they add you.
- You can select Search Visibility based on the default or customizeable features. I keep it to everyone, but if you have a crazy ex-spouse you don’t want finding you, you can type in their name and make sure that they never see you come up in any search function.
- Search result content, this will show a brief snippet of your profile to people who search for you.

Newsfeed and Wall Posts You can further customize what you see in your newsfeeds and on wallposts here. There are two tabs Actions within Facebook and Social Ads. The Social Ads one is a big one selecting Show you Pic in Ads to No One means that you won’t see Your Name loves Brand Name Detergent Become A Fan.

Applications Click the link to the applications page. You can individually change the settings on all your applications. You can also hide or block certain applications from showing in your newsfeed from the newsfeed page. Applications have the most convoluted settings and are really hard to search through. There is a drop down on the page defaulted to Recent Activity.

**If you go to your newsfeed and say you see an application that really annoys you like zombie pirate ninjas sending you drinks and monkeys. If you click the HIDE button on the right of the post you get an option to Hide the person who posted it or Hide the application. You can also hide certain people that come up in your newsfeed this way as well. If I think of more tricks I’ll post them, but those are the basics. Pay attention to the posting options Notes has the privacy setting built in, so you don’t have to worry about a default beyond Only Friends, though if one note you want to post to a select filter of friends and another note you want to post to everyone, but XYZ people you can easily do that.