How to Limit Who can See Your Facebook Posts

By Carolyn Abram from Facebook For Dummies, 4th Edition

Controlling who can see your posts on Facebook isn’t a one-time thing. Because you are constantly adding new statuses, photos, and content to Facebook, constantly interacting with friends and reaching out to people, privacy is actually an ongoing affair. To that end, one of the most common places you should know your privacy options is in the Share menu.

Whenever you are posting a status or other content, the audience, or group of people you’ve given permission to see it, is displayed next to the blue Post button. The audience you see displayed is always the audience you last shared something with. In other words, if you shared something with the Public last time you posted a status, it displays Public the next time you go to post a status.

Hovering your mouse pointer over this word turns it into a button. Click that button to reveal the Audience Selector. It shows a few options: Public, Friends, and a sample of your frequently used Friend Lists. If you’ve added people to your Acquaintances list, you’ll also see an option for Friends except Acquaintances. Click the setting you want before you post your status, link, or photo. Sometimes, you may find that you want to share something with only a portion of your friends. To do that, choose Custom from the Privacy menu. This reveals the Custom Privacy box.

Custom Privacy here applies to the post you’re creating, but this dialog box will appear any time you choose Custom as a privacy setting for any type of information. Customized privacy has two parts: those who can see something and who can’t. The top portion controls the former. The These People or Lists menu has four options:

Friends of Friends: This means your friends and their friends can see whatever you post.
Friends: This option allows only your friends to see what you post. Keep in mind that when you tag people in posts, their friends will be able to see that post, even if they aren’t your friends.
Specific People or Lists: Choosing this option opens a blank text box. You can start typing a name or the name of a list of friends here. After you save these settings, only the people you’ve entered can see your post.
Only Me: This option isn’t one you’d typically use for a post, but you might use it later on if there’s any information you want to store on your timeline but you don’t want to share with others.

The lower section controls who can’t see something. Similar to the Specific People or Lists setting, the Hide This From section has a blank text box where you can type the name of people or lists of people. When you’ve added their name to this box, they won’t be able to see the content you post.

Whatever customized audience you create for one post will be the audience next time you go to post something. Make sure you check the audience next time you post!

After you post something, you can always change the privacy on it. From your timeline, follow these steps:

Hover your mouse over the privacy icon at the top of the post whose audience you want to change.

Every post displays the icon for Public, Friends, Friends except Acquaintances, or Custom.
Click the button to reveal the Audience Selector.

You’ll see the usual options: Public, Friends, Friends except Acquaintances, Custom, or specific Friend Lists.
Click the audience you want.

A change to Public, Friends, Friends except Acquaintances, or a specific Friend list is automatically saved. Changing to Custom requires you to make selections within the Custom Privacy pop-up again.