Saturday 4 August 2012

Privacy for photos on Facebook.

Sharing photos on Facebook is one of the most favourite things of almost every user.
Maybe that is why there are millions of photos are uploaded to Facebook every hour.
People like sharing their pictures with their friends and family through Facebook. Which is really simple and fun.
The catch is that there are some things you want to share with a group of people but don't want rest of the friends to see them. Or don't want your family members to see that.
This is very common with the pictures people share on Facebook. They don't want everyone to see each and every photo they share.
So here is something you might need to know which can help you to set the privacy for your photos as per your wish.

There are different types of albums on Facebook.
  • Cover photos (only if you have the timeline)
  • Profile pictures
  • Wall photos
  • Albums created by you
  • Mobile uploads
  • And other albums which are created by some apps
Besides these albums you have created on your profile, there will be other pics which appear on your profile which are not included in any album.
These are the pics you are tagged in by your friends.

Let me just tell you about these albums in brief.

Cover photos: These are public by default and everyone who can see your profile can see the photos in this album.
There is no way to change the setting of this album to anything other than public. Facebook does not provide any option for setting the privacy for these pics. So when you upload anything to this album, make sure you wont have any problem even if the whole world is able to see that.

Profile pictures: They are the pics that you had set as your profile pic in the past and includes the current profile pic. Photos automatically get added to this album if you set any photo on Facebook as your profile pic. You can also add a new picture to this album by changing your profile picture.

Wall photos: This album includes all the photos you had shared on your wall directly and not added to any album. It is like sharing a status. You can decide the audience for every post. This means you can have different privacy setting for each photo here.

Albums you have created: These are the albums you create and add photos to them. You can set privacy for the whole album unlike the wall photos album where you have a choice to have different setting for every photo. You can make changes to the settings or the album(add photos/delete photos/delete album) any time you want.

Mobile uploads: This album contains all the photos you upload to Facebook using your mobile phone. It is same as the wall photos just that it contains the photos you upload from your mobile. Again, as i said it is similar to the wall photos album, you can have different privacy for every pic.

Other are the albums that contain the pics created by the apps on Facebook. These pics might have your friends tagged automatically. The privacy of these albums depends on the privacy you select while using that app. If any of your friends are tagged in that pic, then the pic will appear on their profile.

How to change the privacy/visibility of an album?

To change the privacy of an album, go to your photos page.
For that go to your profile/timeline, then photos.
If you are using the old profile, you will have to select photos from the page that appears. Here you can see the "Photos" link which you need to select:


This will take you to a page showing all the albums on your profile.
Each of the albums will have a pic which is from the album itself and right under the albums there will the name of the album, number of photos and an "Audience selector".
As the name says it, audience selector help you to set who can see that album.


In this pic you can see the audience selectors for the albums.
The way the audience selector icon appears tell you the current visibility or privacy setting.

If you click on this audience selector, you will get a drop-down menu from which you can select a different setting for that album.
You will get different options like friends, friends of friends, only me, custom and then there are the names of the lists on your profile.
You can select any of the options as per your need.
Friends, friends of friends and only me options do exactly what the name suggests. The custom option helps you to do more than the previous options. You can make the album visible to certain people/lists only or hide it from certain people/lists.
The names of the lists are to help you to quickly set the privacy listwise. You can check the names of the list you want to make the album visible to.
(Know more about Lists on Facebook)

As told earlier, you can't change the privacy of the cover photos album. Whoever can see your profile can see your cover pics aswell.

For the albums wall photos and mobile uploads, you can have different privacy for every photo. Just go to that album and look for the audience selector under the pic. Use the audience selector to select the visibility.

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