Facebook is the most popular social networking service today. It was created by Mark Zuckenberg in 2004; it is available in 70 different languages and it is completely free. Facebook has multiple features that allow users to share news from other websites, start a discussion, upload photos and videos, chat online with friends, create pages, join existing groups or create new ones.

An increasing number of companies, after viewing candidates' resume view candidates' facebook pages to check their "digital reputation". That's why it's very important to be able to best manage your own profile and maintain an excellent "digital reputation". Facebook is also used by many companies to adverstise services and products. By paying a fee, is it possible to better promote own products and carry out marketing campaigns, adressed to specific users categories. This is the reason why it is very important to be able to manage at best your own profile and to maintain an excellent “digital reputation”. In order to do that, it is necessary to be familiar with Facebook settings in order to protect users’ privacy.

Sign up: To sign up for Facebook is very easy. Once you have opened Facebook homepage, click on “Sign up” button and enter personal datas like name, last name, date of birth and an e-mail address. After having registered and set up a password you can create your own profile by adding more personal information, profile picture and cover photo and start developing your social network by adding people to the friends list with the aim to exchange messages, also via chat or to get notified when friends publish something on their page.

Profile Management: As previously mentioned, after signing up is it possible to add known people to the friends list and enter additional personal information.

Once you have logged into your account for the first time, Facebook will directly invite you to find your friends on the social network by using your e-mail contacts, i.e. Outlook, Gmail...

Afterwards, you will be able to insert personal information like the name of attended university, the city of residence and hometown (all this information will allow Facebook to suggest people you main know and invite you to add them to the friends list).

You can then upload your profile picture that has to be carefully selcted as it will be visible to everyone on the social network, including people outside of our friends list.

Then you will be able to publish posts, to create photo albums, to join existing groups, to chat with your Friends, to share news and to see all the materials that your friends are publishing.

Privacy: Privacy is a very core issue. Over the years, rules have been modified by the social network with the purpose of strenghtening users’ privacy. Before 2010 there were no restrictions on “who can see what”. Later on, several security settings have been introduced:

1)            Only me: uploaded information, posts and photos can be only seen by the account holder.

2)            Friends: uploaded information, posts and pictures can be only seen by friends from the friends list.

3)            Friends of friends: information, posts and pictures that have been uploaded using this setting can be seen both by friends and by friends of friends.

4)            Friends and network: information, posts and pictures that have been uploaded using this setting can be seen by friends from friends list and by selected netoworks (i.e., city networks, etc.).

5)            All: uploaded information, posts and pictures can be seen by any person from the network.

6)            Custom: using this setting you can choose who can see what you publish, inlcuding the option to exclude or include anybody.