r2i forum

How about 'what to do to not feel exposed on FB' :-) but, naked and its "ity" will do fine : ) It's Friday after all : )

There was a kind of related thread: Future of social networking

Anyway, I have no suggestions to the question. It is precisely this concern - mix of friends of varying degrees of closeness and from different times in life - seeing messages on wall, that keeps me from posting on my wall or others' wall (if that is the correct terminology). Just like you, I also have people from my in-laws side, my old friends, current friends, chuddybuddy : ) friends, then my mommy-friends. Right now, I feel downright snoopy when I read messages on some of my friends walls. And they keep 'poking' (?) me and I guess feel a bit miffed that I almost don't post.

Someone I know had a different date of birth in school than real one. So school friends thought it was that date all along, and other friends knew the real date. The first time one of the two birthdays came along, the confusion was funny on the FB wall. Some were not amused as they might have remembered all those Archie's cards given over the years on the wrong day : )

I hope some ideas pour in to your question, as I want to get more active on my FB wall.

Use 'Friend Lists' facility. Your acquaintances won't even need to know what list they are on. Very useful!
http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=768

Yes, I have a great solution and trust me I am not being sarcastic

Don't use Facebook.

I am a big anti-facebook.

I still don't have facebook account. Some of the reasons are as mentioned above. May be I am old fashioned that way, but if I want to get in touch with someone either I will call them or send e-mail. If I want to share my personal photos, I will set-up an album on Picassa and send the link to select few ones and it is by invitation only. I just don't like the idea of sharing my and my family's personal photos with random friends, people from work or some guy I met at a get-together. And finally the staus updates " I am going to the bathroom" or " My weekend was awesome, I bet your weekend sucked"....come on! There is nothing 'that' exciting going on in my life that I want to openly share with the world!

Having said that, at times I do feel the peer pressure i.e, having the need to set-up an account just for the heck of it so that everyone will stop bothering me. May be someday I will get the courage to do so.

A very good topic indeed. I myself am facing similar dilemmas regarding FB and orkut, although I've pretty much stopped using orkut, I still use Fb though. I too have friends from way way back when and even some people i've met just recently and family , in-laws the whole nine yards. I try to be very prudent in what I post, but as you said there's very little that can be done about what other's post. This reminds of an incident that recently happened with my nephew (on my husband's side) my nephew had a message as FB status, the message was as follows :

" I am gay and proud of it, and I don't mean happy ".
When I read this, i was blown away, i immediately told my hubby, and we discussed whether it was posted as a joke, or he was really coming out ? Almost a 100 of his friends commneted, saying all kinds of things, from , they knew since the 8th grade, and so on. Well, it was on his profile for almost a whole day, during which he had not replied to any of the comment to his post. Finally, one of his friends (X) commented, saying that my nephew had used his (X's) cellphone to log on to FB and had given the phone back without logging out, and he had posted this as a prank, and he (my nephew) wasn't even aware of it . My nephew deleted the whole post the day after, but i think by then almost everybody must have read it. It was just another reminder as to how un-safe and unguarded (?) one is on these websites, some times I just wanna delete my account, but it is great for keeping in touch with friends and family who are not regularly involved in your life, so I talk myself out of deleting.

I had seen a youtube video about this shared by one of friends on FB (what an irony !!) , watching that was also somewhat alarming. I am sharing it here for all :

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

I dunno what the foolproof solution is to protect one's privacy on Fb, I do have some friends, who don't post any pictures, and only share random stuff from youtube etc, on the status updates, and all personal info is done through pm's only strictly. I myself don't post much personal info, but I am not as restricted as some of my friends, maybe you could try something like that.

I have had a couple of situations where my friends have posted something I did not wish to share with others, and i delete the comment as soon as I see it , beyond that I dunno how much more can be done. We are in the electronic age, where people don't have 5 minutes to talk to one another on the phone, but prefer texting or facebooking or twittering to their friends, it is here to stay, and you can choose to be a part of it, or be left out, but once inside, you have to roll with the punches.

AALC,

I am not anti-facebook....Its great..trust me. I am iin touch with colleagues cum friends from my first job. If I don't have them on facebook, I would probably lose touch with with them as emails/photosharing I is something I don't do much..I am lazy searching friends in the contact list and then sending emails. It is great for folks like me. Maybe one just have to suck it up that your life is so much into open...

The worst is when a friend comments on his own contact's (some other person) album or wall post and I get to see it.
I mean I dont even know this 3rd person and can still see his personal pictures or read his thoughts.
That is a serious breach of privacy and should be stopped by FB.
FB in the past few months has become increasingly open. I make it a point to share only picassa links of our pics with friends...

OP,

Do not add any family members, spouse and relatives in your FB or LinkedIn network. I have turned down some of them and need to remove the rest. Maintain network with friends and ex-flames.

OP,

This is what I do. Maybe you know these already. Will post it anyway.

Go to Edit My Profile-->Choose your Privacy Settings-->Customize Settings-->Customize. This will let restrict others.

Aa_Ab_Laut_Chale;316875Yes, I have a great solution and trust me I am not being sarcastic

Don't use Facebook.

I am a big anti-facebook.

I still don't have facebook account. Some of the reasons are as mentioned above. May be I am old fashioned that way, but if I want to get in touch with someone either I will call them or send e-mail. If I want to share my personal photos, I will set-up an album on Picassa and send the link to select few ones and it is by invitation only. I just don't like the idea of sharing my and my family's personal photos with random friends, people from work or some guy I met at a get-together. And finally the staus updates " I am going to the bathroom" or " My weekend was awesome, I bet your weekend sucked"....come on! There is nothing 'that' exciting going on in my life that I want to openly share with the world!

Having said that, at times I do feel the peer pressure i.e, having the need to set-up an account just for the heck of it so that everyone will stop bothering me. May be someday I will get the courage to do so.

I felt the exact same way as the above and never had a facebook account for the longest time. But then, everybody and his brother and sister were on FB and prodding me to "keep up with the times" - this, from my younger cousins and nieces/nephew. So I have a FB account that I use judiciously. Most of the contacts in my list are family, very close friends, a few ex-colleagues and some old-time classmates from school and college. But I make it a point to add or accept friend requests only from those who I know really, really well and not just casual acquaintances.

The rule of thumb I use is this: if I were to post something about my family or myself or if others in my list were to post something about my family or me, would I mind if this person knows? If yes, then don't accept request, if not, then add. Except for a couple of family pictures, I don't go and post an album full of pictures of my kids in the playground or my wife and I relaxing in our living room. I also don't believe in giving out minute-by-minute status updates or discussing meaningless topics. (we have the H&B thread in this forum for that :wink- j/k ). And I don't even know what farmville is all about and ignore when friends in my list send me coffee, ice-cream, potato-salad and what not!:))

And yes, as mentioned by FFH, I make sure my settings are customized with proper restrictions. I don't want "friends of my friends" relaying what's going on in my life to the rest of the world . . my friends are good enough to do that!! :))