You always hear complaints about Facebook when someone’s coworker/parent/distant relative joins Facebook.

For the most part, these fears are unfounded. You can control what certain people and groups of people see and don’t see. If you frequently put “Obama sucks” in your Facebook statuses and don’t want your diehard Democrat mother to see it, you can prevent her from seeing your statuses (or a group of friends that you could name, for instance, “Democrats”).

Besides being able to control your privacy, it’s also sometimes nice to categorize and label your friends. While I don’t categorize my friends by politics, I do like to categorize people by common interests (webcomics, programmers, etc). In addition, I have a “Nobuddy” group where I put people I don’t know very well.

How to control privacy settings: Currently, you can go to http://www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=profile – or click “Privacy Settings” under the “Settings” tab, and click “Profile”.

Currently there are 10 categories you can control: Profile, Basic Info, Personal Info, Status and Links, Photos Tagged of You, Videos Tagged of You, Friends, Wall Posts, Education Info, Work Info.

Now, I believe most of that is self-explanatory. There are 4 presets for those categories: Only Friends, Friends of Friends, My Networks And Friends, and Everyone. Unless you’re okay with parts of your Facebook profile being public, you should avoid the “Everyone” preset. “My Networks And Friends” is used, by default, on the Profile category. That’s generally okay, but if you’re worried, change it to “Friends of Friends” or even “Friends”. Your networks include your city, school, or workplace, so it’s okay for people in your networks to see a picture of you and your marital status.

The real power comes when you click “Edit Custom Settings” below a category. There you can control which networks can see that category, and you can also hand-pick friends or groups of friends to keep from seeing that category. For example: let’s say I’m worried about what photos of me a friend may upload. Specifically, I don’t want my mother or my employer to see them. I would scroll down to the “Photos Tagged of You” category, click “Edit Custom Settings”, and type my mother’s name and my employer’s name in the text box at the bottom. I could also place my mother and my employer into a friend list, and block that friend list from seeing photos tagged of me.

Photos: with regard to photos, you can control privacy settings per photo album.

Caveat 1: Let’s say, in the example above, that Joe likes to upload risque photos and tag me in them. If my mother is friends with Joe, I believe (but I’m not 100% sure) that my mother could still see these photos. I could ask Joe to upload those photos to a “Risque Photos of Josh” album and block my mother from seeing them, but that’s tedious. If someone can confirm how this works either way I’d appreciate it.

Caveat 2: Photo control is pretty granular, as I mentioned above. However, other settings are not as granular – either friends can see all status updates, for example, or none. Keep in mind that it may be obvious (to someone else) that they have been blocked.

Final thought: Facebook owns your data, not you. You should regard as public everything that you post online, even if you have strict privacy settings. Mistakes happen.