As paranoia surrounding Facebook and job hunting continues to rise, especially now that academic search committees are starting to think about it, it can be increasingly important to develop more granular controls over your privacy. I have a pretty robustly configured set of privacy controls on my Facebook feed (which of course begs the question of why I even bother using it all, but I digress). Today, I want to talk briefly about using Facebook friend lists as a way of exerting further control over your information and who can see it.
This article helps in solving a number of problems on Facebook, including:
- Parents / relatives on Facebook.
- Friending students.
- Friending faculty at universities where you might apply for jobs / who know people at jobs where you are applying.
- Friends who might be willing to sell/trade information if contacted by a hiring committee.
Ultimately, what we are going to be doing today is creating a set of Facebook friends who are between full friends and unfriended people. When you have completed this tutorial, you will have a list of people whose friendship you want to acknowledge but who you don't want knowing any of the details of your life. They will be able to see you as a friend but not see any of your activity on Facebook. Ultimately, this is less drastic than blocking or unfriending someone.
Note - You will need to be logged into Facebook to make any of the changes described in this article.
Step 1: Making a List
First, you need to go to the "Edit Friends" page. This can be found under the Account menu on Facebook (or you can click here). Once there, there is a button at the top of the page that says "+ Create a List" (see Figure 1). Click it to begin the list creation process.
- Figure 1: The Create a List button.
When you click it, a dialogue box will pop up that contains a field labelled "Enter a Name" and then a list of your friends (for privacy reason, I'm not sharing an image of this). For the purpose of this demonstration, we are creating a list of students I have and, as such, will be calling the list "Students" (you can create more than one of these lists, if you find it helpful to have several such lists). To make the list, we first enter the name ("Students" in this example) into the text field and then you can add friends to this list by clicking on their name or picture in the list that below the name field. When you are finished click "Create List".
Step 1a: Pruning Your List
Now that you have a list of friends who you want to deny access to your information, you may wish to make changes in the future. To do this, you can go to the Edit Friends again. In the side bar of that page (see Figure 2), you will find a list of all the lists you have created. To edit it, click the name of your list (here called "Students").
- Figure 2: The List of Your Lists (in the side bar on the Edit Friends page).
Removing People From a List
When you do, you will see a list of all people who you have added to your list. You will also notice that there is a small "x" on the right of their names (see Figure 3). When you click that "x", the person will vanish from the list and be able to see your activity again (remember, if you remove someone, they will be able to see all your activity, not just things you post after removing them.).
- Figure 3: Sample list member (note the "x" to the right of the name).
Adding People to a List
There are actually a lot of ways to add people to a list, but I am just going to talk you through the easiest. From the same page as discussed in the "Removing People From a List" section (above), at the top of the page, you will note a field labelled "Type a friend's name to add..." and a button labelled "Add Multiple" (see Figure 4):
- Typing the name of a single person in the field will add individuals to a list.
- Clicking the button will bring up the same selection dialogue seen when you first created the list.
- Clicking on peoples' names or profile photos will add them to the list you are editing.
- Figure 4: The field and button needed to add friends to a list.
Step 2: Locking Down Your Feed
Now that you know how to create and maintain a friend list on Facebook, we need to fully unlock the power of this feature by coupling it to some privacy settings that restrict access to people on the lists you have created.
To do this, you will need to access your privacy settings on Facebook. This can be done by clicking the link to "Privacy Settings" under the "Account" menu on Facebook or by clicking here.
Once this page has loaded, click on the link that says "Customize settings" (see Figure 5). Doing so will bring you to the customize settings page.
- Figure 5: Facebook privacy settings page. Note the Customize settings link at the bottom.
On the Customize Settings page, there are two kinds of settings "drop-down" and "button". You need to set both kinds to maximize the use value of your list.
Changing Drop-down Privacy Settings
There are a number of settings that you can customize via drop downs on this page (see Figure 6 for an example). You can leave these however you want, but for certain aspects of your privacy settings we need to block the members of the list we have created. We will be working with the "Posts by me" drop-down (Figure 6), but the method is the same for all the drop-downs.
- Figure 6: An example of a Facebook privacy customization drop-down menu. This one is for "Posts by me" which controls who sees your photos, notes, status updates, etc.
Clicking the drop-down next to "Posts by me" (which says "Friends Only; Except Stude..." in Figure 6), brings up a list of different privacy choices:
- Everyone
- Friends of Friends
- Friends Only
- Customize
For the settings you wish to exclude a list from, click "Customize". This will bring up a dialogue that allows you to create custom privacy settings (see Figure 7). Select the base privacy settings you want to use for your posts (personally, I set everything to "Friends Only" because I don't want my information released to anyone I don't approve, but you could choose less paranoid settings if you want). Under the heading "Hide This From," there is a field labelled "These people." Type the name of the group (in this example it is "Students") into this field, which will bring up a drop-down list. In this list, you should see the name of your list (in this case "Students") highlighted in blue. Click on the name or press the return key on your keyboard to block the people on your list from seeing your posts. Once you have done this, your dialogue should resemble Figure 8. If so, click "Save Settings."
Note: If you have multiple lists, you can add them to this field, one at a time, following the method outlined above.
- Figure 7: Custom Privacy dialogue box. Note the field labelled These people under the heading, Hide This From.
- Figure 8: A successfully updated set of custom privacy settings. Note how "Students" is outlined in a faint blue border.
Changing Button Privacy Settings
In addition to the drop-down based privacy settings, there are a number of privacy settings that have to be changed by clicking a button labelled "Edit Settings" in order to make changes (for no good reason) (see an example in Figure 9). In order to change these settings, you must click this button, which will bring up a dialogue box that contains a drop-down menu like the ones discussed above. At this point, consult the section labelled "Changing Drop-down Privacy Settings" to complete these settings.
- Figure 9: An example of button based Facebook privacy settings.
Recommended Privacy Settings
Now that you know how to add friend lists to your privacy settings, which settings should you block them from? Here is the list of settings I have excluded people from due to privacy concerns:
- Posts by me
- Family
- Relationships
- Website
- Photos and videos I'm tagged in (button setting)
- Can comment on posts
- Can see Wall posts by friends
Wrapping Up
Now that we've covered how to create friend lists on Facebook and to use them to block certain peoples' access to content you post, you should have a better idea of how to keep yourself safe and out of certain peoples' eyes without worrying about damaging relationships by unfriending.
One final point: you can also use lists to provide even more granular control, in case you only want to block certain aspects of your news feed from view. If you set the privacy settings of your posts to "Friends Only" in the section labelled "Changing Drop-down Privacy Settings" (above), you can block individual lists from seeing a specific link or status.
In the part of the News Feed that lets you post various things, if you look closely, you can see a small lock icon next to the "Share" button (see Figure 10). If you click on this lock, you can bring down a drop-down menu similar to the ones discussed above (in the section labelled "Changing Drop-down Privacy Settings"). Following the instructions on how to work them, you can exclude groups from seeing a specific post, instead of the blanket controls we have been discussing here. While this is more work, it does give you a finer grained set of controls over who can see what content.
- Figure 10: Posting things to Facebook. Note the small lock icon next to the 'Share' button.