Facebook Privacy Hoax

See:
[Hoax Alert] To all my Facebook friends ... I want to stay PRIVATELY connected ... mouse over my name.
 Key info from the article:

"If you follow the instructions in the message, you won’t be protecting your privacy or that of your friend. The only thing you’ll be doing is unsubscribing from any of their Facebook comments and likes. This kind of defeats the purpose of being friends with them in the first place.  When the original hoax first hit, our friends at Sophos posted a detailed article as to why it doesn’t work.

They also shared this important piece of advice:
“It is not just your settings that control what goes in your Facebook newsfeed and appears on your friends’ tickers. Anyone’s posts which have privacy set to more than “Friends” will go to all the friends of all the commenters. This is a fact! We’ve tested it!”

The best thing you and your friends can do to protect your privacy is to set all of your privacy and sharing settings to ‘friends only.’ As we have mentioned in another blog post, sharing with friends of friends can potentially expose your post to almost 150,000 people! Also keep in mind that if you comment or like items that are public or set to ‘friends of friends,’ then your likes and comments are exposed to everyone who can view the shared item."

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If you want to share something with Friends of Friends or with the Public, you can do so (but just remember, that item will then be shared with Friends of Friend, or with the Public, depending on which you choose). You can choose who to share each individual post with by clicking on Custom - choosing who can see it and then you can also choose who can't see it. You can also do this after the fact from your own wall/Timeline.