Facebook has this handy chart of all of the various permissions and privacy settings of Facebook groups:

So, now that you have an understanding of what it means for a Facebook group to be public, or closed, just how secure and private is a closed Facebook group?

Is it a place you can share your deepest or darkest secrets, knowing that nobody outside of the group can see them?

Only if your group admins are 100% trustworthy, and infallible.

To demonstrate what we mean, here is an actual example.

This is a notification that Facebook places in your regular notifications area when an admin makes a privacy change to a group to which you belong. This particular group is usually closed, meaning nobody who is not a member of the group can see what group members post:

Now, we want to draw your attention to a couple of things:

First, this was the very first notification received in the notification stream, meaning that there was no obvious notification that the group had been made public in the first place. There was no message in the notification stream saying that “so-and-so changed the privacy of the group, it was private, now it’s public.”

This means that it’s possible that you will not know that the group in which you are a member, that you considered private, has actually been made public with a single click by one of the admins.

Now, we can hear some of you saying “Well, yes, but it doesn’t really matter because the notification also said that it was only ‘momentary’.”

Remember when we said that there was no obvious notification? For those who receive all Facebook notifications as email, as well as within Facebook, there actually is a notification that the group was made public – sent by email.

Here are the actual email notifications for our example:

The astute observer will notice that this private group was made public for a full 18 minutes.

(Our very own 18 minute gap – shades of Nixon!)

Now, is 18 minutes of unexpected public exposure of your posts really a big deal?

Consider that there are plenty of closed groups on Facebook like these:

And we say yes, any amount of public exposure of posts made in groups where you have been relying on your posts being and staying private and protected, is too much.

Now, all that said, Facebook says that (as of the time of this writing), once a group has 250 or more members the admin can only make it more restricted, not less. So, that may be true today – but it won’t necessarily be true tomorrow. Facebook changes things every day (and in fact openly states that they update some things – such as their apps – every two weeks like clockwork, whether they need it or not).

As we’ve said more than once – if you don’t want someone to see it, don’t put it on the Internet. At all.

Get New Internet Patrol Articles by Email!

We respect your email privacy | Powered by AWeber Email Marketing

The Internet Patrol is completely free, and reader-supported. Your tips via CashApp, Venmo, or Paypal are appreciated! Receipts will come from ISIPP.

CashApp us

Venmo us

Paypal us