Some people want their entire site on Multiply to be private in every way. Others want everything to be public. But the majority of Multiply users are somewhere in the middle, wanting to share some things with the world, but reserving some other bits of info. just for their closest friends and family.
Multiply's privacy settings are very customizable. It's possible to show some pieces of information about yourself, without giving it all away. The following is a quick summary that will help you set up your Multiply experience to be exactly the way you want it.
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if you want to make a post private, then make sure you select something other than "everyone" in the privacy settings at the end of the post. (if you already published the post but realized later that you forgot that step, you can go back and edit the post and change it.) posting something for "everyone" will make it so that search engines can find it. (some people want this. it's a handy feature for people who want to have a public blog in addition to the private blogging that they do for friends and family only.)
if you
don't want search engines to find your content, select anything other than "everyone" when making the post. this would mean selecting "network," "contacts" or individuals.
if you want to
just send something out to all your friends, say, or just your family, you can choose "contacts" and then modify that even further to include only your contacts that are friends (or family, or coworkers).
don't forget that any replies you make on a friend or family members threads will automatically fall under whatever privacy setting they have made for their post. so if they have set their post to everyone, then not only is their post available for the world to see and for search engines to pick up, but your replies are also.
if you want to make your profile private, you need to go to your profile, click on the "edit profile" link to the upper right of the profile and change your privacy settings for each section.
if you want to make your last name, email address and birthday private, you need to click on the settings link in the upper right hand corner, and then select "my account" and change that there.
if you want to make your guestbook private, you need to click on "customize my site" on your home page. then go to the box that's around your guestbook and click "edit." change your privacy settings there. to read the guestbook faq,
click here.
if you don't want anyone to know where you live, not even your contacts, you can change the zip code setting to 00000.
if you want to make your groups and contact info. private, click on "customize my site." then go to the box that has either your contacts or groups in it. (this works pretty similarly for both.) click on "edit." the privacy settings are the first things that you can change.
note: hiding your contact box or your groups box does not make the information private. someone could find it via URL. so make sure you change your privacy settings before hiding the box (if you choose to hide the box). also, even though you've hidden the boxes, you'll still see the links to those sections under your headshot. others won't be able to see it, but you will.
also,
the A#1 most important rule to remember when concerned about privacy is to never ever ever accept someone as a contact that you don't trust. if you do that, you pretty much make all the rest of the privacy controls on multiply rather worthless. (it's like having a well guarded castle but letting in any visitor that arrives at the gate. ;-) ) for more information on adding contacts, please check out
this post.
Related posts include:
How to Make Your Site Private
Privacy Settings 
