Eek! My Friends Can See What I'm Doing!

If you've been on Facebook you've probably noticed Facebook's new real-time friend activity ticker on the right-side of your profile and you may have asked yourself, "Do all my friends see my activity?  The answer to this depends on how you've chosen to manage your privacy settings.

How to do people manage their privacy settings on Facebook?  The short answer is to go to your privacy settings, click on the downward arrow net to HOME.  A drop-down menu will appear, select Privacy Settings (see image to the right).  From here you should  review all of the categories in this section and edit or set the sharing defaults to whatever you prefer. For example Public, Friends of Friends, Friends, or Custom. NOTE:  Custom settings allows you to select specific people or just you as your default privacy setting.

If you need more guidance, than you here's the long answer.  Go to WikiHow's article on  Using the Privacy Page for Facebook.  There you will find a much more detailed overview of how to control your privacy settings defaults and how to manage the privacy of your content per post that you share.

While Facebook and other applications may not be set up in exactly the way we might always prefer, it's important to remember and to take advantage of the wealth of useful information available online, for instance Facebook"s Help Center and the many online user forums.  On the other hand if you just don't know where to look or have zero interest or time to spend looking, then just ask someone who knows, like me.  Because when it comes right down to it, whether you are a casual or everyday user,  you are the only one responsible for your information so it is important to understand how it's being used and shared.