Facebook Security. Or is there such a thing?

Jason Perlow from ZD Net has posted an excellent tutorial on how to “lock down” your facebook privacy settings.  His article covers all the bases, from creating a fan page for your “virtual friends”, to restricting information on your real page, to deleting your account if all of the above aren’t enough.

I’m bittersweet about the whole Facebook thing.  On one hand, Facebook has allowed me to reconnect with people I haven’t talked with in ages.  We’re talking friends from elementary school, Boy Scouts of America acquaintances, and former co-workers, some of which I haven’t seen in 20 years. Thus I can’t say that Facebook is all bad.

On the other hand I, like most people, have built “partitions” in my life to keep relationships from becoming complicated.  These partitions prevent the type of disaster that would inevitably ensue if, for example, my stoner best friend from High School were to message my current boss about the happenings of a certain Christmas party in 1991.   Facebook threatens those very partitions, by not letting me restrict who can see (and contact) others on my network.

Jason’s article does an excellent job of presenting your options.  For those with hundreds (or even thousands) of friends, he recommends creating a fan page, where folks who stumble upon your profile could be pointed.  Adding them to the fan page would limit the amount of information, as well as interaction, they would have on your main profile.  And in doing so, you would not lose your ability to connect and relate to them.  It’s a well thought out compromise.

He then walks you through the admittedly painful job of eliminating all but the most important friends, the core group of people in your life.  For while that geeky kid you used to hang out with at the comic book store was a great guy, do you really want him finding out where you live?  Or stalking you or your friends or family?

And finally, he admits that even these extreme measures may not be enough.  For the truly paranoid (or truly cautious), he walks them through the steps on intelligently cancelling your Facebook account.  After all, if you just hit “cancel my account”, what happens to your information that’s already stored?  Are you sure?  Guess again.

After saying this, I’m still keeping my Facebook account, and I suspect most others will too.  But a little education- and a fair dose of caution- is never a bad thing.   After all, if we don’t take our own privacy seriously, what hope do we have of convincing others to do so?