I was asked to write a basic guide to privacy settings on Bebo for parents of older children at my son’s school, and I am sharing a version here in hope it helps a few people understand what they need to do to make their Bebo experience a little more private.

Bebo have a pretty good online safety page so view the video’s here, as no point in me repeating the same advice. Check out the Bebo safety videos, here.

Ok let’s start by saying Bebo is meant for folk who are 13 years or older, but of course there are hundreds of thousands of kids younger than this using Bebo, so if they are going to use it they might as well be safer when they do so.

Bebo Privacy Page Location

After you log on to Bebo (1) select the link in the black bar “settings” and then (2) click the link “Privacy Settings”. See Image below.

Bebo Privacy Page Options

I have made a screen shot of my recommended privacy settings, below but I will take you through each step here also.

Profile Viewable By: My friends only.

Contact Age: You decide the max and min here, personally if you have all the other settings done I wouldn’t bother too much with this one.

Age: (Tick This Box)

Profile Views: (Tick This Box)

Online Now: (Un-Tick This Box)

Member Since: You decide here as it’s doesn’t matter that much.

Searchable: (Un-Tick This Box)

Posting: (Tick This Box)

Review Comments: (Select) Review all comments.

Applications: (Un-Tick This Box)

That is basic steps to setting up your privacy page on Bebo, below are some additional tips that I hope help.

Friends Tip – Don’t approve everyone, don’t approve people you do not know. Stick to approving your family and friends only, strangers are strangers no matter what age they are or say they are.

Location Tip – It’s really best that you don’t give out your location, what school you attend, year you’re in and so on. Having younger sister-in-laws I know fine well they give out far too much information, so it’s best you know who your Bebo friends are.

Photo Tip – Any photo you post online can be taken and used by anyone without your permission. Be sure you really want to post that image of you in a bikini or that funny photo where you dressed up. Harmless photo for friends and family to see, but what if someone printed it off, then handed it out around school? Think about what you want others you don’t know so well to see.

Additional Tip For Parents – I personally would make it a condition that my son/daughter had me as the parent listed as a friend in their profile so I could easily check what information they are posting online via Bebo. Some people will see that as a privacy invasion, so have to go with whatever view you as a family hold.

If you have any other tips on privacy and staying safe using Bebo please comment, as I would love to hear them.

A couple of people have asked me how I update Twitter, Facebook and Bebo at the same time from my personal Twitter account and also update Twitter and Facebook only with my work orientated Twitter account. So I am going to try and explain what I am doing as it may be helpful for others who I don’t know and are searching to the solution to this puzzle, multi-Twitter account updates across Twitter, Facebook, Bebo & others.

I will break down each example, but you can run all of these at the same time, but how you post will effect what is updated with your Status, this can be handy for example when you want to say something to only your Twitter account and it not show on Facebook or Bebo, I will give posting examples at the end of this blog.

Status update on Twitter and Facebook

This is one of the more simple ones to set-up, all you have to do all you have to do is add the Facebook Application called “Twitter” (click here to install, opens in new window)  so now what will happen is every time you Twitter your status on Facebook will also update, very simple.

Status update on Twitter, Facebook, Bebo & Others

Say you want your Twitter messages to update Facebook, Bebo and other social networks, then you want to use Ping.fm it’s not to hard to set-up and very handy if you have more than just Twitter & Facebook that you want to update. Simply select all the places you want to update via Ping.fm and when you want to update Twitter, Facebook & Bebo at the same time, just do it via your Ping.fm interface.

But you want to do it from your iPhone I hear you cry; well good news is the Twitter application Echofon supports Ping.fm integration so it’s a simple case of setting up the Ping.fm API on the Echofon iPhone App. So now when you Twitter from your iPhone, your Facebook and Bebo (plus others) can be updated at the same time.

Now don’t worry any @ replys or DM’s will not show up on Facebook or Bebo, it’s only your actually tweets and re-tweets.

Why do this, isn’t Twitter enough?

Well for some Twitter is more than enough, but what I have found is that by integrating Twitter with Facebook and Bebo it opens up new conversations that you don’t have on Twitter alone, especially when some of your friends are not using Twitter. My @ClarkeDuncan Twitter account is more work orientated but still has a personality, where as @Supercod Twitter is very much my personal Twitter account in that I be talking about TV shows, Films or other stuff I feel like that people following my work Twitter probably don’t want to hear.

However if your following me on Facebook, your probably a mix of friends, family and folk I have some work interest with and as Facebook is more of a social platform to me I wanted to share both my Twitter work feed and Twitter personal feed on Facebook. Bebo on the other hand is very much personal/social only as everyone on that is either a family member or an old friend with a few exceptions of the odd person I know via Affiliate Marketing so they will mostly be only interested in personal Twitter stuff as work stuff will probably bore most of them

Posting Examples

Twitter + Facebook Set-up

If you post to Twitter from any application or from the web interface it will show on Twitter & Facebook at the same time.

Twitter + Facebook + Bebo & Others Set-up

If you post via the Twitter web interface it will only show on Twitter.

If you post via the Ping.fm web interface it will show across all.

If you post via Echofon with Ping.fm integration setup it will show across all.

If you post via any other App it will show on Twitter only.

At no point will either of these methods show @ replies or DM’s.

Hope this was of help to some people, if it was why not let me know via Twitter @ClarkeDuncan cheers