You use Facebook to stay in touch with family and friends. You probably also use it to keep in contact with business acquaintances. So, you need to strike the right balance between openness and privacy.

Facebook has long been known for its excellent privacy tools. But it recently made changes that expose more of your information. Search sites can find your Facebook pages. Coworkers may be able to see your photos. It’s important to review your privacy settings.

Facebook considers certain items in your profile publicly available information. Your profile photo, location, fan pages and friends list are open to all. But you can make some of this private.

To hide your friend list, click the blue pencil in your Friends box. Uncheck “Show Friend List to everyone.” Only friends will see your list.

You can hide your location if you choose. You can also control who sees your other contact information. Click Settings>>Privacy Settings. Click Contact Information.

You’ll see your contact information. Use the dropdown menus to select your privacy level for the items. To hide your location, leave Current City blank.

It is also important to set the privacy level for other elements that appear on your profile. Click Settings>>Privacy Settings and select Profile Information.

Each profile element is listed. You can opt to share individual elements with friends, friends of friends, friends and networks, or everyone. Use the dropdown menus to make your selections. In most cases, you’ll want to avoid selecting Everyone.

Pay close attention to your photos. Each of your photo albums has its own privacy setting. Click Edit Settings next to Photo Albums. Make your privacy selection and click Save Settings.

You can also specify privacy on a per-post basis. For example, limit who sees your status updates. Just click the lock icon next to posts on your profile page. You’ll get privacy options for the post.

Lists are a great way to control privacy. You can limit what members assigned to a specific list see. To create a list, click Frends>>All Friends. Click Create New List. Add contacts to the list. Then, select what elements of your profile they can access.

You’ll also want to limit your profile’s appearance in search results. I recommend preventing search sites like Google and Bing from indexing your profile. Otherwise, your publicly available information and anything you’ve chosen to share with everyone will appear.

Click Settings>>Privacy Settings and Search. Deselect Allow next to Public Search Results.

You can also limit searches done from within Facebook. Click the dropdown menu next to Facebook Search Results. Select who will be able to search for your profile.

Applications created for Facebook also pose privacy risks. The applications your friends use can see some of your data.