Want to protect your Facebook account’s privacy? Here’s a post to guide you to safeguard your privacy to the maximum.

Note: This is a long post. Please wait while all the images load. It may take some time, depending on your net connection. Click on the thumbnails for a larger and clearer view.

I have posted two methods to customize your Privacy. The 1st one is long and manual. I’ve written that first. If you want a simpler way, check the end of the post.

Login to your Facebook account (This step is common for both procedures).

Customize Manually:

Click the Account tab and then Privacy Settings.

You’ll see the following page there:

Now, let’s customize one by one.

Click on Personal Information and Posts. This section contains settings to all your personal information and posts, like Bio, Birthday, Interests, etc..

Start customizing from Bio and favorite quotations. Click on the text at right side. It may be Everyone, Friends of Friends, etc. Change it to Only Friends, or if you want more privacy (like you keep on adding random people), select Customize.

Here, you have the option to make your Bio and posts visible to only yourself, or you can choose to specific people or also you can hide from certain people. Click on Save Setting and return.

Once you finished for Bio and favorite quotations, go for Birthday, Interests upto Comments on Posts. After that, click on Back to Privacy.

Now, click on Contact Information and start customizing in a similar manner.

I suggest you customize your phone number, address, email addresses only to yourself or your close ones. Here’s a preview of my Settings for Contact Information.

Now again return to the previous page and click on Friends, Tags and Connections. This page controls information people can see on your profile. Customize according to your needs.

Now, let’s go back to the previous page and choose next option to customize. It’s Search. This page will let you control Facebook search and various search engine results for your profile.

If you don’t want your profile to land up in search engine results, uncheck the Allow box besides Public Search Results. Go back to Privacy Settings page and open Applications and Websites.

Are you a hardcore Farmville fan? Or, like to play quizzes and all? Then, you have to make sure your privacy is rightly set. If you want to know what does your profile share while playing all those quizzes, click on What you share.

Now, edit settings for What your friends can share about you

Uncheck all the options, unless you want your friends to share information about you. Click Save Changes. Then there are options to Block Applications, Ignore application invites, etc.. Customize to suit yourself.

Return to Privacy Settings and there is a last option to Block People.

Enter person’s name/email to block him/her from accessing your profile, sending you friend request..

Gosh! That’s a long procedure to secure your profile.

Customize using Javascript:

If you want to save your time, there’s a javascript to scan your profile for privacy setting flaws.

But, I don’t trust any of these 3rd party javascripts. They can be malicious. So, I prefer the manual way.

So, go ahead and customize your profile, either manually or using the javascript.

Update: Facebook has simplified privacy settings. Check out the updated post here.

Tagged as: customize, Facebook, privacy, settings