Privacy settings for your Facebook status.

When you share something or post something on Facebook, you need to check what are the privacy settings for that post you have shared.
You certainly don't want everything you share to be seen by everyone in your friends list or seen by anyone on Facebook(even if they are not friends with you on Facebook).
Facebook provides you with very good privacy settings for what you share or post on your profile.

You can see there are three options that you can choose from depending on what you want to do.
Set your status, share a pic or video or ask a question.

The most common thing people do is write a status or add a photo. Asking a question is very rare amongst the users.
The photos you share from here go into the Wall Photos album on your profile and you can have different privacy setting for every photo.

How to set privacy for your status update?

Many people don't want their status/photo to be seen by people who aren't their friends on Facebook. Some want only a few friends to see the status. Also there are a few who don't care even if every person on Facebook reads their status. It all depends on what is being shared.

So how to make your status/photo visible to few friends and hide from others?
It's really simple!
Just some clicks and maybe some keys to be pressed and you can set the privacy as per your wish.

You can see "Friends" and a downward arrow in the snap above. That is what can help you set the privacy.

It need not necessarily be friends in your profile. It can be public, custom or anything else. That tells you the current privacy setting for the post.

By clicking on that tab, you will get a drop-down menu with several options.
From that you can choose the desired setting. It can be public, friends only, friends of friends, only me, custom or choose from the lists you have on your profile.

So here's what the options can do for you:

Public- This makes your status/pic visible to everyone using Facebook.

Friends- Only your Facebook friends will be able to see the post.

Friends except Acquaintances- The post will be visible to your friends except to the people who you add to the "Acquaintances" list.

Only me- No one except you can see the post.

Custom- It is the best if you know how to use it. It is to customise the settings if the above options are not enough to do what you want to.

When you select custom, you will see a box like this:

There are two main sections. One to add who you want to see your post, that is the "Make this visible to" and the second one is to hide the post from certain people as the name says.

As you can see in the snap, there are few options to make the post visible to.

Friends and Friends of Friends are simple to understand and use.

The third option allows you to select specific people or list so that your post will be visible to those people only.

When you select the "Specific People or List" option you are asked to enter the names of friends or lists and suggestions appear from which you need to select the required friend/list.

The "Hide this from" section allows you to hide the post from specific people or lists.

Just start typing the name and then choose from the suggestions.

Same things are applied to sharing a photo on your wall.

There are few more things you can do while sharing.

You can see there are two icons on the lower left corner of the area which appears when you are writing a status.

These are to tag your friends in the status and to add a location respectively.

When you click on the left icon, an area will appear saying "Who were you with?".

Start typing a friends name and then select the name from the suggestions.

If you click on the right icon, the balloon, similar area saying "Where are you?" will appear.

Again begin typing name of the place and select from the suggestions.

Note: If you tag a friend in the status/pic, then that post/pic will appear on his wall and whoever can see his wall will be able to see the post/pic.