What can people see on your Facebook page?

       This week's topic on digital footprint, having and maintaining a good one but also monitoring it has prompted me to go review my Facebook Privacy Settings.  Your Facebook page can greatly affect the image of your digital footprint and more employers are using social media as a way to filter applicants. Whether you agree with this practice or not, it is still a part of today's reality.  I have my own opinion on these ethically questionable practices but the main purpose of this post is to help you all know how to go see what everyone can see on your Facebook page, we can revisit the ethical facet of this issue at a later time.  

Facebook's Privacy settings have been made more user friendly throughout the years but many people still simply create an account and don't change their privacy settings. 

Some of the things one posts on Facebook were only meant to be shared with  friends but sometimes,without knowing, are posted for everyone to see.  The following few steps will help you get a clear picture of who can see what on your Facebook page.

First LOG IN to your Facebook account/page/profile like you normally do then click on the SETTINGS button in the upper right hand corner of your page and select PRIVACY SETTINGS from the options that appear.
 

Once you get to the Privacy Settings page click on the TIMELINE AND TAGGING tab on the left as shown below. 
Next to WHO CAN SEE THINGS ON MY TIMELINE you will see REVIEW WHAT OTHERS SEE ON YOUR TIMELINE, click on VIEW AS.  This will then open up your Facebook page exactly the way the general public can see it. 


You may also notice the option to enter a specific name to see what one of your particular friends can see but the page will show you what the general public can see by default.
 
 

If what you are seeing on your profile as being visible to anyone just shocked you, here are a few things you can do to change that. 

Click on the PRIVACY tab (view image below) on the left hand side and look at your settings next to WHO CAN SEE MY STUFF / WHO CAN SEE YOUR FUTURE POSTS?.  If yours says EVERYONE then literally everyone can see your posts as you probably noticed while reviewing how others see your page.  Click EDIT and change that option .  

Now that will affect future posts but what about all the ones you've already made? Click on LIMIT PAST POSTS and change those settings to what you consider suitable to you but carefully read the prompt as this change cannot be undone.

After doing that, if you go back to step one where we looked at what the public could see on your page, these changes should have affected what you now see when performing that same check again.  

One last thing I want to attract your attention too is the search engine option lower on this PRIVACY SETTINGS AND TOOLS page under WHO CAN LOOK ME UP? You'll notice the question DO YOU WANT OTHER SEARCH ENGINES TO LINK TO YOUR TIMELINE?  By clicking EDIT you can change whether or not search engines like Google can find things on your timeline or not.  


This is just a quick overview of some of the privacy setting of your Facebook account, while you're there take the time to review the rest of them and make sure that these settings suit your privacy needs/desire. 

I hope that this was helpful to some of you. 

Mat