Things to do after Facebook sign up: Your customized settings to optimize your account

After a Facebook sign up, first of all you need to upload your profile pic and provide your info, like bio and ‘About’. You can import the contacts from your device to your FB profile depending on your choice. Also you can send a couple of friend requests to people you may know. Although according to Facebook, you’re not supposed to send a friend request to someone you don’t know. But at the beginning, this is not really that much crucial.

Having friends on Facebook is not a big deal, no matter what gender you are. If you’re a girl or a woman then you’ll having like thousands of friend requests within a couple of hours. If you’re a boy or a man, then you won’t be having too many friend requests. So in order to increase the number of your Facebook friends, you just have to keep sending requests, that’s all.  But be sure to NOT send too many requests in a short span of time, because this action/practice is considered as ‘SPAM’ by Facebook’s automated system (artificial intelligence).

Change settings immediately after Facebook sign up

After you’re done with the preliminaries as to setting your profile pic and info, also sending a couple of friend requests, it’s time to take some real actions on your Facebook account. These actions are like vaccines that are given to newborn babies, so that they won’t catch deadly diseases easily. The same way these precautions of yours on your account saves you from being harassed and disturbed.

Go to your Facebook settings page with url https://www.facebook.com/settings first, you’ll find yourself on ‘General’ tab. But the first tab/link you should visit is ‘Timeline and tagging’. Now on there are a couple of settings you need to do on this page. You have to decide ‘Who can post on your timeline’. You could set that as friends, in fact this option is set to ‘Friends’ by default. But should you be having such Facebook friends some of whom are not exactly known to you and if you’re kind of scared that they might post inappropriate things on your timeline, then you have to choose ‘only me’.

Why deal with timeline and tagging settings first of all?

Take my particular for example; I do not know most of my Facebook friends personally. The thing is that I accepted their friend requests, because I thought they were interested in me and my online activities. I happened to encounter with them on a Facebook group based on technologies (later I left that group due to some reason). Even now, every time I post on different Facebook groups and pages, I receive a couple of friend requests. I am sort of tired of that, so now only friends of friends can send me those requests.

Let’s come to the point now. A few of my Facebook friends posted something on my wall/timeline that didn’t exactly match with my personality and taste. So I deleted those posts and in fear of being harassed again, I just chose ‘only me’ as the person who can post on my timeline.

Also some friends have been tagging me in their posts inappropriately. If I don’t review these tags before the posts appear on my timeline, then my image could be harmed to the rest of my Facebook friends and the public. So I have chosen to ‘review posts that friends tag me in before they appear on my timeline’. And you should do the same, unless a little embarrassment once in a while isn’t so bad for you! (This article is on to-do things after Facebook sign up)

Here I provide an image depicting my ‘Timeline and tagging’ settings:

Who can see things on your timeline

The next two options are ‘who can see posts you have been tagged in on your timeline’ and ‘Who can see what others post on your timeline’. Frankly, these two are not that much important. You could easily set them as whatever you like. According to my experience, I have been tagged in posts most of which are irrelevant and not so interesting. But I’m still going to approve some of those tags. It’s just that I don’t want everybody to see those.

That’s why I have set this option as ‘Friends of friends’. The latter option doesn’t mean anything to me. Although I have set it as ‘Friends’, but you should take a close look at the above image to find that I have not approved anyone else other than me to directly post on my timeline. If nobody else is going to post on my Facebook wall, then I don’t need to care about ‘who can see what others post on my timeline’, right? (This article is on to-do things after Facebook sign up)

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The third section of timeline and tagging settings page

Although as you can see in the above image that I had set the option ‘Review tags people add to your own posts before the tags appear on Facebook’ as OFF, but it was simply a mistake/misunderstanding. Now I have corrected my mistake and ‘Enabled’ it. This is because someone just can’t come along and add tags to my own posts that publicly appear on Facebook, before I even know about it. Surely I don’t discourage my friends to add tags to my posts, it’s just that I have to review those before they publicly appear.

There are two other options in this particular section. But I don’t understand them fully yet, nor do I have the energy/patience to study and research on them and thus come to know what those actually are. I just felt that setting them as ‘Friends’ would be best for me, you can do the same. (This article is on to-do things after Facebook sign up)

Head to your privacy settings now

Now that you’re finished with your ‘timeline and tagging’ settings, you can go ahead and work a little bit on your privacy settings. When it comes to privacy I’m not that strict, as you can see from the following image which depicts my privacy settings:

I have been sharing links to articles of my blog and my YouTube videos on my Facebook timeline. That’s why I have set this option ‘Who can see your future posts?’ as public. But most people set this option to ‘Friends of friends’; you should do the same, unless most of your posts have content that you want to share publicly.

There is also an option to ‘Limit the audience for posts you’ve shared with friends of friends or public’. Although I never used this option, but you can try that if you feel you’ve shared a lot of posts with your friends of friends or public, which you shouldn’t have. Also if you feel that those posts were previously ‘shareable’  with your friends of friends or public, but not anymore. I never felt so yet, that’s why I never tried this option. (This article is on to-do things after Facebook sign up)

Facebook tricks: Learn a few here

Who can see your friends list and and contact you

Most people prefer to allow their friends or even ‘friends of friends’ to see their friends list, in my case it’s ‘only me’. Well the thing is that a few of my rivalry aren’t allowing me to see their friends list; not that I am actually on that list. Well, as a retaliation, I’m not going to allow them see my friends list either; no matter how clever and cunning they think they are. It’s just that they might approach my Facebook profile in the guise of a friend, so none of my FB friends are allowed to see my friends list. Anyway, it was my case, yours could be entirely different. So consider your situation and then decide who you’re gonna allow to see your friends list.

Out of fear for the same thing described above, I also have closed the access to public to send me friend requests. So now it’s only friends of friends who can send me these requests. Previously I allowed anyone to send me friend request, but this didn’t exactly work for me. It’s just that I had some random and unknown people as my Facebook friends and many of them acted weirdly when it came to tagging and commenting. (This article is on to-do things after Facebook sign up)

Well, your case could be totally different; so as always, consider your particular case to decide what you’re going to do about it. For your information, many smart Facebook users don’t allow public to send them friend requests. But people who are simple in thoughts allow this, are you one of them?

Facebook tips and tricks: Here’s another few

Privacy of your email address and phone number

I believe you don’t need to put too much privacy in your email address which is associated with your Facebook account. That’s why you should allow everyone to ‘look you up using the email address you provided’. Let me give you an example as to why’s that. Suppose one of your acquaintances wants to send you a friend request. In order to do that they first have to find out your FB profile, don’t they? And to find your profile they must run a Facebook search on your name or email address. Let’s face it, many people have the same name on Facebook. Also your profile may not appear on the search results, if the search is made based on your name. That’s why an email based search is better on Facebook, since no one else can have the same email address as you, right?

Now if you have had your email id private in the first place, then there’s no way someone would find you using that. And also should a situation like this ever arise, it might be harassing both for you and that person. So you will then want to make your email address ‘public’ again. Trust me, sooner or later this is going to happen, in case you made your email id unsearchable on Facebook. So why not having your ‘Facebook associated’ email id public (searchable) in the first place? (This article is on to-do things after Facebook sign up)

There’s an alternative though, it’s your phone number. If the phone number associated with your FB profile is still public, then people can easily find you using that number. But then again, why would you have your phone number public, whereas you would prefer to have even your email address private. There’s no point in doing that, right? That’s why, as an experienced FB user I suggest that you keep your email id public and phone number private; like the way I did it, as depicted in the above picture.

Why would you want to keep your phone number private?

It’s just that in your daily activities you have to give your phone number to many people. Once they have your number, they get an option to spy on your cyber activities. In case of Facebook, they can easily find your profile (unless you had previously made your phone number unsearchable/private) and visit your timeline and thus get to know what sort of a person you are. Although this might be good in some cases; like you applied for a job with your CV submitted. Now the employer can take your phone number from your resume, runs a FB search on that number and discovers you. If they consider as a good and active human being, they may choose to recruit you. (This article is on to-do things after Facebook sign up)

But providing your phone number as searchable on Facebook may do you more harms than they may do you good. Because anyone having your phone number will easily get to know who and how you are on FB. This leaves you with little privacy, in my opinion. Also you might receive threats and blackmails from profiles you won’t be able to identify as to who these belong to. So you should allow only your friends to look you up with the phone number you provided.

Hide your Facebook profile: Get rid of spys and strangers

Last but not least

Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile? I, for one, do; because I use my FB profile to promote my blog and YouTube channel. So I want more people to find me, even from outside of Facebook. But your case could necessarily be different. Let me give you an example as to why someone would not like this linking with other search engines apart from Facebook’s own.

A couple of years ago I had a girlfriend, at some point I had a breakup with her. But I was still following her on Facebook, indirectly. Then there was a time when she made her phone number and email address unsearchable on Facebook. So there was no way I could find her profile using either of these. Also she used to change her profile name every now and then. That made her almost impossible to find on FB. So I was mentally devastated at that time.

That’s when I planned of a genius way: ‘why don’t I search for her on Google? I would definitely find her there if I can use her precise name on the search, even if she might have blocked me on Facebook’. Well, I knew one thing for sure: her Facebook name always included one or two special words, no matter how many times she changed it. So I did a google search on those words. Luckily I easily found her and kept following her. (This article is on to-do things after Facebook sign up)

Now should you be facing similar privacy problems, you may choose to NOT want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile. You might even choose so for other reasons as well.

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