You can add friends and Facebook pages you have liked to specific lists, and your friends and Pages can be added to multiple lists. If you have a relative, who happens to be a close friend, and a gaming buddy, then you could add this person to all three lists.

The lists also serve another purpose when you are posting status updates and other items to your Wall. After you enter your status update, you can choose to share it with a specific list.

How to set up your Facebook privacy settings

Facebook’s Privacy Settings page includes a good but brief overview of how its privacy options affect sharing information, being “tagged” in posts by others, changing your settings and installing apps and games. This should be your invitation to change some key options, starting with the “See more settings” link at the bottom of the Privacy Shortcuts menu available from the lock icon at the top right corner throughout Facebook:

-Change “Who can see my stuff?” to “Friends,” not the dangerous default of “Public.” And remember that if you add “Life Events” to your profile’s Timeline — things like graduations and weddings — they will still default to public even after that change; you need to limit the visibility of each of these milestones as you add them.

- Leave “Who can send you friend requests?” to “Everyone” unless you want to limit your Facebook use to lurking.

-Change “Do you want other search engines to link to your timeline?” to “Off.” If you want to be visible to Web search engines for professional reasons, there are better ways to do it — set up a public Facebook page.

- “Review posts friends tag you in before they appear on your timeline” should be set to “On.” This way, buddies with bad taste can't clutter your own profile unless you OK it first.

-Finally, the “Ads” section includes a couple of options — “Third Party Sites” and “Ads and Friends” — that limit whether friends might later on see your name and picture below an ad.