Go to the upper right hand corner of your page, and next to your picture is a down arrow for a menu.

On that menu is Privacy Shortcuts. From that link is a another menu, and one of the menu items is “Who can see my stuff?”

That will give you various privacy levels. I don’t let anyone except my friends see my stuff; and not “friends of friends”. But if you comment on a public thread, anyone can see your comment.

Then tell us all what name you’ve used and we’ll all come and harass you.

Your friends have a “wall” which is, when you go to their profile page, you’ll see a spot where you can post. Some people have their setup where you can’t post on their wall (there’s no wall to post to).

If you post to your friends’ walls, some have it where others can see it and some have it where nobody else can see it but them.

If you want to post something (either your own thing or by sharing something else, via clicking “share”), and have a certain person see it, you can type their name and it will come up the way it does on Fluther. Then you click on it and it will “tag” them so that they see it.

If you join a group, some groups are closed, some are public and some are secret. The closed groups, nobody can see what you post in them unless they’re in the group too. For the public groups, anybody can see anything you post in them, no matter what your own privacy settings are. For a secret group, nobody can see what you post in them either, unless they are a member.

Facebook can be intimidating for a new user, I’d think. I’ve been frustrated in the beginning trying to figure out the privacy settings. I’ve commented on friends’ posts and had another one of my friends chime in, which I found surprising and annoying, because the second friend was not friends with the first.

What I think adds to my enjoyment of FB is joining groups. Groups of whatever interests me, from a hobby (sewing, baking, etc.) to “liking” someone’s page (a blog’s page for example), to a local group (a photography page from my region, a group of moms in my school district, a group from the city I grew up in where people reconnect and reminisce). So when I scroll through my FB news feed, any new posts from those things I joined or liked will come up. I’ll see photos that others posted from my area, I’ll see the moms talking about a school issue or who can recommend a good electrician or something, I’ll see some sewing people post photos of their new makes, I’ll see a blog post (Tudor history is one) that the blogger has posted in. Also, if I have friends in those groups and the friends post, FB will alert me so I can see what my friends posted.

It takes time to figure it all out. For now, definitely assume everyone in the world sees everything you write. No matter what it’s good to assume that on the internet, but to some extent I think we assume some privacy that we set up is functioning as it should.

Once you get your settings where you want, like only allowing “friends” to see your status updates if that what you want, the thing to remember in my opinion is if you write on someone else’s status, or in a group, or some random link or video circulating through facebook, if that friend or link or group has their privacy set to “public” everything you write can be seen by the world, your settings mean nothing in that situation.

If you join a group that is “secret” or “closed” then your posts will only be seen by members of that group. If it’s an open group, or maybe it’s called public I don’t remember, then it’s just that, open to the world.

Also, if you post a photo and tag someone, your privacy settings should be set to where the tagged person’s friends can’t see it, unless you want that. It’s something in privacy settings about photo postings.

There are hackers lurking on FB as anywhere on the Internet. They will often impersonate someone by going to their page and stealing their profile picture, and then they will go to that person’s friends list and ask the friends to friend them again. The friends think the old friend may have changed their account or something has happened and accept the new friend request.

After the hacker/new friend has obtained access to some people’s accounts, s/he will send a message to the person who accepted their friend request. S/he will try to get the person to send them money.

There is a way to make yourself less attractive to being impersonated. You hide your friends list. To do this, go to your profile page on a computer, not on a mobile device. Find the area with the pictures of your friends. It’s usually somewhere down the page on the left. Put the cursor in the upper right corner of the friends list area, and a chevron will appear. Click the chevron, and it will ask you if you want to edit something. Choose that. Choose “Me only” when asked who you want to see your friends list.

So what these hackers are doing is just impersonating people. They haven’t strictly speaking hacked your account. They don’t know your password. They don’t have control of your account. They’re just impersonating you trying to get money from your friends.

If you get a friend request from someone you are sure you’re already friends with, that is probably a fake account. Go to your own friends list, and check. If you are indeed friends, delete the request from the fake/hacker.

That is the biggest scam that goes around on FB.

Finally, those of us on Fluther who are friends with each other on FB call Fluther “the other F site.” It’s a kind of code. We don’t completely spell out the name, because a few people use the same name on both sites, and they may lose their anonymity that way.

Always assume whatever you post anywhere (even if it says friends only or whatever) will be seen read by everyone.

@Hawaii_Jake.“So what these hackers are doing is just impersonating people. They haven’t strictly speaking hacked your account. They don’t know your password. They don’t have control of your account. They’re just impersonating you trying to get money from your friends.”
“just”?