by M. J. Joachim

Created on: November 03, 2009

You finally got on Facebook and now you need to learn how to use it. First you want to invite and accept friend invitations, and then you need to determine who can see what on your wall. Setting your Facebook profile settings is a pretty straight forward process.

*Beginning on your profile page, you will see ^Home, Profile, Friends, and Inbox^ on the left hand side next to the Facebook brand. On the right hand side you will see ^Your Name, Settings, Logout, and a search box^. In the center and slightly beneath the headings is your actual wall that has your public message, info, photos, boxes, notes, causes, and whatever other applications you've preselected to be visible.

*Put your cursor over the Settings label on the right hand side. You will see a list that includes: Account Settings, Privacy Settings, Application Settings, and Help. Click on Account Settings to see what you have listed for all of your settings. From there you can click on Privacy Settings to manage what friends can see, as well as what they can and can't do within your profile. If you don't need to see all of your settings, you can go directly to Privacy Settings from your profile menu.

*Once you are in the Privacy Settings menu, you have a list of options. Click on the Profile option. You can type in a person's name to see how they view your wall right away. Directly under that are several sections listed with a heading. Each of these has an additional box underneath them. By clicking on the upside down triangle on the right, you will be able to see a selection of choices.

*If you click on the box under the heading, you will see another list of options for each category. This is where you can customize your settings. You can allow everyone to see everything, or you can prevent certain people from seeing things. Your customizations will be visible at the bottom of each category, along with a running total of how many people you customized in that manner.

These settings allow you to customize the following information: Profile, Personal Information, Status and Links, Photos tagged of you, Videos tagged of you, Friends, Wall posts, Education information, and Work information. You will be prompted to save any changes you make as you make them and prior to leaving the settings section on Facebook as well. Facebook privacy profile settings come in handy, especially if you are accepting friend invitations from people you don't know very well.

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