Privacy and Social Networking

Still not sold on facebook, twitter, linkedin, and similar web applications? The most common reason I hear from people as to why they won't try social networking is the loss of their privacy. Well, if that's all that's keeping you from connecting with friends, colleagues, and potential customers, I'm here to share some simple things you can do to participate and maintain whatever level of anonymity you choose!

Read on for ideas for guidelines you can set for yourself, and settings relevant to several of the more popular sites to keep your personal information private.

Set Goals and Ground Rules

One of the reasons that social networking sites are so popular is because of their versatility. Twitter in particular can be used for a wide variety of purposes (see: 50 ideas for using Twitter for business), so it helps to brainstorm in advance your goals for using social media. Will you be promoting new products and services? Will you try to create a following that you can quickly communicate with and get feedback from? Do you want to appeal to the industry you're in and discuss issues with other pros in your field? There are so many possibilities that just general ideas will do in the early stages. Once you jump in and start using the services, you'll find the more you use social networking sites the more you'll find what works best for you.

As you set your ground rules, keep your goals in mind and remember the golden rule: these services only know what you tell them about yourself. Many of the sites only require a valid email to sign up, and from there you don't have to fill in any information you want to keep private. For example, several people in my Facebook network use made up names in order to keep their identities private, and don't upload personal photos of themselves. In addition, they keep personal revealing information about themselves (phone #, email, home address) off of the websites. You can choose the level of reveal no matter the network you join - there is no correct method, and it's entirely about personal ground rules. Keeping personal info private is pretty easy on Facebook and Twitter, particularly if you create your identity around your company and use the service for B2B purposes. The only downside is that people won't necessarily know how to find you unless you tell them, as your name won't show up on a people search.

Privacy on Facebook

Once you've signed up for an account, click on "profile" at the top, and then your "info" tab. That, in a nutshell, is everything Facebook knows about you. Click "edit information" to add or remove any of the information you want your friends to see. On top of that, there's a little lock icon next to all of the contact information - you can set each field to be visible to everyone, friends of friends, just friends, or no one. And remember, Facebook is a friends-based system; becoming "friends" is a mutually agreed upon process where one person sends a request and the other can choose whether to accept or not, and you can quietly unfriend anyone at any time. Facebook does not allow people to access your profile who are not on this list, so Google searches may turn up your name and avatar image, but won't let you learn more without friending first. My personal philosophy is that I need to know the person in real life in some way before I accept any new Facebook friends, as some limited contact info appears in my profile (such as my instant messaging, personal email, and mobile number).

When using Facebook for business, it's typically first necessary to create your account and then use the "ads & pages" application (click the "applications" in the lower left) to build a mini-page for your business that you can use to publish information and create a fanbase, but that's a discussion for another article!

Privacy on Twitter

Besides your "tweets" (your posts of 140 characters or less), the only other personal information you reveal about yourself is what you publish from your profile: Name, Location, Website, Bio. This is managed by clicking "Settings" and the the "Account" tab, and these fields are optional. If you're further concerned about revealing personal information accidentally in your tweets, clicking the "protect my updates" checkbox on this page locks anyone from reading your tweets who you haven't approved in advance. If you're using Twitter for business, you probably don't want to protect your updates as it is often difficult to gain followers by doing so. Instead, fill in the profile information with your business name and contact info, and tweet with information and links relevant to your goals, industry, company news, and so on.

Privacy on LinkedIn

If revealing your personal information is unsettling to you, you may want to steer clear of LinkedIn. It's true that just like any other social networking site you can fill in limited information and create a page for your company, but a major part of LinkedIn is that it is essentially a resume host and professional connection site, displaying your professional credentials for other people you connect to or other companies looking to do business with you. LinkedIn is smart about keeping your contact info private, only displaying contact information if you are a 1st level (equvalent to "friend" on Facebook) contact. Otherwise, there is a button to send an email contact with your email address screened, allowing for some level of anonymity. To give you an idea of what someone searching for your public profile will find, you can see my LinkedIn profile here. However, the greater purpose of LinkedIn is to show that resume and show yourself off profesionally, so if you are uncomfortable with the idea of your resume being on the internet, either run an incomplete profile or consider other options for social networking.

Only Share What You Want

In essence, it all comes down to balancing your privacy interests against the goals you have for using social networking. Revealing limited personal information is good to get some of the better functions out of a service, but isn't necessary if you do extra legwork to get people connected to you. And most of these sites understand that maintaining some level of their members privacy is very important and make it as easy as they can to keep your personal information away from those who you don't want accessing it.