How to Control Your Ning Privacy Settings

By Manny Hernandez from Ning For Dummies

Privacy is important on Ning, like on any other online community. Ning offers you a variety of ways to restrict the information others can see, and you can also control what information you add to your Ning account.

In the My Settings – Profile page of your Ning account (which you access by clicking the Settings link in the top-right of any page on a network), you can modify information that others see about you. If you make any changes to your profile, after you’re done, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the Save button.

Here are some ideas of ways to keep your personal information more private in your profile:

Name: Unless the network requires you to enter your full name as part of its terms of use, you may want to consider using only part of your name (such as Manny) or a generic username (like Manny_Mo) to keep your identity more private.
Birthday: Your age in years is displayed on your profile, and your birthday gets displayed on the network (for others to congratulate you) unless you select the check box next to Don’t Display My Age.
Gender: If you don’t select the check box next to Don’t Display, your gender is displayed on your profile page.

Clicking the Privacy button to the left of the My Settings – Profile page takes you to the Privacy page. This page gives you extremely granular control over a number of things related to your contributions, your information, and even your actions and how others can reply to your actions in the network:

Who can view your profile page and friends? Your options are Anyone, Members, and Just My Friends.
Who can view your photos, videos, and blog posts by default? Select Anyone, Just My Friends, or Just Me.
Who can comment on your photos, videos and blog? Offers you the choices Anyone, Just My Friends, and Just Me.
Do you want to approve comments before they appear on your blog? If you select Yes, you have to approve comments before they appear on your blog. If you select No, comments posted are published immediately.
Do you want to approve comments before they appear on your comment wall? This option works on your Comment Wall the same way as the previous one operates on your blog.
Who can view your events? The options, again, are Anyone, Just My Friends, and Just Me.
Do you want to notify 3rd-party blog tracking services when you add a new post? Effectively sets off the equivalent of an announcement that gets sent to a number of services that operate by tracking people’s blog posts. If you'd rather stay under the radar, deselect the check box next to the word Yes.
Which of your actions should display on Latest Activity? By default, all actions are displayed. If you don’t want a particular action to appear on your Latest Activity, deselect the check box next to it.

When you send messages to others, when you visit other profile pages, when you decline invitations, when you de-friend or decline a friend invitation from someone, or when someone gets banned from the network, those actions never get displayed.