How to check your Facebook privacy settings

Facebook is a social giant that holds huge amounts of personal information about each of us.

Facebook is also renowned for changing its privacy policies frequently and not necessarily advertising this fact, so it pays to check at regular intervals that you’re only sharing what you post (as well as what you have posted and will post in the future) with the audience you expect.

So, how can you check what your current settings are? Partly in response to criticisms that it wasn’t open enough about what info was being shared, Facebook has a new tool called Privacy Check-up.

Accessed from the padlock dropdown at the top right of the page, the privacy shortcuts panel that opens up gives you options for a quick check of who can see your stuff, who can contact you and what you can do is someone is bothering you.

While these options are helpful, the top option is to open the Privacy Check-up, which then takes you through your privacy basics in three quick and easy sections.

The first looks at your Posts,  explaining that this setting controls who can see what you post from the top of your news feed or profile, as well as showing what your current setting is, and giving an obvious drop-down if you want to make changes for future posts.

The next step is Apps, with a list of what you’ve logged in to with Facebook. It explains that you can edit who sees each app you use and any future posts the app creates for you, or delete the apps you no longer use. It also gives you a link to the App Settings with a reminder that you can edit them at any time.

The third page covers your profile and personal information – so who can see the likes of your mobile number, email and date of birth if you have shared them with Facebook. It also reminds you that you may have shared more information about yourself and recommends you check your About page to see that is up to date as well.

Then you’re finished, safe in the knowledge that you’re only sharing what you post on Facebook with the people that you want to see it.

And, of course, once you’re done, don’t forget to download digi.me for free to back-up your posts and pictures forever, giving you ongoing access to them even if you decide to delete your account in the future.