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Keeping your stuff private on Windows Live

I spent a good portion of the last year working on Permissions and Privacy on Windows Live.  We made a lot of progress but setting this up can be hard to figure out if you don't have a good strategy.  Here’s a tutorial that will help you see how you can use permissions settings on Windows Live so you can relax a little more about sharing your personal information online.

Windows Live

Personal information

• Click “Profile” in the top nav
• Click “Details” in the left nav
• Every chunk of information says who you are sharing it with.  You can change this permissions setting by clicking on it (in this case “Everyone (public)”)

• You can let everyone see it, only people in your network see it (that’s people in your Hotmail address book, on your Profile, and in IM), or your extended network (that’s friends of friends)

• You can also make your own categories of people and permission it to them. 

This is super helpful if you want to set up “close friends” vs. “strangers” distinctions for sharing bits of information and content.  When you add new people you can add them to a category and voila – they have permission to see only the things you want them to see!

You can go back and categorize all your people easily using the category dropdown on the People page:

• You can also enter individual people

 

Photos (Files and other things work the same way)

• When you create a new album you have an opportunity to set the permissions

• You can limit it to your network so only your friends will see it

• Or you can get the more detailed options shown above if you click “Select people”

 

• You can also go back and change the permissions settings for old photo albums by clicking the “Shared with:” link at the bottom

 

Facebook works in much the same way – I’ll post a tutorial on that soon.