Killer Tech Tips

(By Ramesh)

Facebook has slowly become one of the driving forces behind social media but the fact remains that it is still a place to be sharing all your personal information. Your friends list is often full of people you know but not all of them would be close enough to you to know everything.

For example, you might want to share photos from your Wedding with your close ones but not everyone. The last thing you need is people you don’t really know checking out your new wife . We land up in many such situations and therefore, it is critically essential that you make sure that the things that are private remain private. At the same time, you do not want to kick people out of your Friends’ list. That’s not the right thing to do when you are part of a “social” network.

Fortunately, there are options which let you manage things properly and we are here to help you out with that.

Here’s how you can hide stuff from specific Facebook friends

First, let us start by classifying your friends into different groups. Click on Account Tab from the top right corner of the screen and hit the Edit Friends link.

A table will show up listing who are the ones who have the privileges to access different parts of your profile. Now, our aim is to change that to fit our needs. Click on the Customize Settings option from below the table.

A page with a lot of options will show up. The first option is what you will be changing first. Everyone will be selected by default. To the right of Posts by me, click on the drop down box and choose Custom.

Now, its time to choose how social you are going to be. If you want to be really secretive about your whereabouts, you should be choosing Specific people from These people selection box.

On the other hand, if you are not so skeptical and want to hide your photos only from select people, you can opt for the Hide this from option and enter the names to people who you think shouldn’t be looking at your statuses.

Click on Save Settings and you can breathe safely. Your statuses, pictures and videos are all safe and they reach only the people who you want them to reach.

There is a way to manage your friends better and split the trusted ones from the weird-you-don’t-like-ones – Lists. Lists allow you to filter your friends based on categories letting you assign visibility modes to each of them based on what they would be interested in. For example, you can separate your friends from the people you know at work, your college-mates from your schoolmates etc. based on your personal needs.

So, let’s go back to the beginning and start off again. Click on the Account tab and then select the Edit Friends option from the drop down box.

The lists you have already created will be available on the left pane. Select one of them, if not, create a new one by hitting the Create list button at the top of the screen.

Once you are inside the list, you can add and remove people to it one by one by using the bar on the top. Instead, if you prefer to do the selection all at once, use the Add Multiple option.

Having finished  with the list creation, you can go back to the Customize Privacy settings page and use your group in the settings. Start typing in the name of the group and Facebook will list it for you. Select it and Save the Settings again.

Finding your way around the interface wont be so hard when you do things over and again for a few times. If you can remember to change the privacy settings whenever you make an update or upload an album, the Lock symbol near the status bar will give you the same options as in the Settings page. And you can always go back to Privacy Settings and see if the changes you made are in tact. Browse around the options and change them accordingly until you find the perfect set.

Just don’t be so skeptical about your friends. Before you actually hide stuff from people, try to trust them  a bit. You do not want to lose any friends because of this.

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