All good things to know. Some of this I didn't even know was possible. The friend settings I had already implemented, but tomorrow I'm going for the rest of it. I don't want facebook using any of my stuff because I neglected to make it private enough.

I was thinking about making a super hilarious internet joke about friending Ben et al., but then I stopped to think...

...when did 'friend' become a verb? What have I become?

This is a very good reminder of the settings that have existed for a while. Too bad it took a crazy set of ToS to make people realize that they should be a bit more careful how much of their life they put online.

Of course, doing some of these have trade-offs - making it so people can't search for you, imho, pretty much defeats the point of facebook and social networking.

Sadly, my life isn't exciting enough for there to be any embarrassing pictures of me to be tagged.

I feel like there so much to do to cover your self on facebook, I would just delete my profile before do all of that.

Best privacy setting of all - don't have a facebook account!

@Plates: Some of us find it to be a useful social utility. I don't care for Facebook in particular, and don't actively use it myself. But I would never sacrifice the ease with which I can keep track of so many people, without another alternative to fall back on.

I just upped my security settings (to higher than the article recommends), I just keep the account around to see what the fellow grads are up to.

@mgy: pretend it's the new slang shortened version of the previously existing verb 'to befriend' ? what to do with the new verb 'to google' i have no idea

Seems the "remove yourself from google searches" tip no longer works. Sadly, that's the only one I'd really be interested in.

@aguacarbonica: @Plates: For real. Don't post something on the internet that you don't want anyone else to know. Facebook or otherwise.

Apparently Ben isn't concerned enough with his privacy settings so he shared last Halloween's pictures with us?

Or is that just the best possible photo for the story?

@Claytons: Are you sure? If so this is a change within the last few days because I helped my friend implement this feature this past weekend.

@Claytons: I couldn't find it, either

Great post! Thanks for sharing. I was pretty confident I was doing all those things right, but I liked having confirmation. As I'm currently job hunting, it's nice to know that potential employers can't find anything on me on Facebook.
Now when my wife comes home tonight, it's time to make sure she has the same settings enabled (she's a middle school teacher just like the wife of the article's author).

@Mr_Human: It's there. If you have your search setting already set to anything other than "Everyone" it won't show up. Go under "Search" in the Privacy settings and change the search visibility drop-down to "Everyone". That box should appear, and you can un-check it, then change your visibility back to "Just Friends" or whatever t was on to further ensure it stays that way.

So...Tinkerbell?

@Claytons: Looks like it works just fine to me. Keep in mind that if your profile is already in the search engines it might take them awhile to remove it; it's not going to instantly vanish.

@mgy: Verbing words weirds language.

Ben, how did you find that picture of me. Have you been watching my cams and taking screencaps? ;)

@Plates:
You beat me to it.

While Facebook has reverted to their previous contract, my biggest beef with the Facebook Terms of Service still hasn't changed. Specifically, the TOS has always said that they can sublicense your images, video, etc... to anyone without compensation to you. That essentially makes them a stock photo agency with the worst terms in history. See the underlined portion of the contract.

This is what I have a problem with: "...fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense)..." and "....and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise..."

Sublicense means to be able to rent your work, photos, video, music, etc... to others. You are still relinquishing your rights to your work according to the Facebook TOS.

@johnva: Calvin FTW!