Dear Friends, help keep your own details private on Facebook

There's a message doing the rounds on Facebook as people copy and paste it into their status in response to a new(ish) news ticker on the top right hand side of the Facebook page. The worry is that because it displays that I've liked a post along with the post itself, your post might become visible to people who aren't your friends. The solution it seems, is to ask me to change my settings for each of my friends individually to disable this feature.

Sorry, but the answer is no, and it's not just because I'm feeling lazy. Here's why.

Working on the basis that Facebook has not yet been able to suck the thoughts from your head via your keyboard (they'll never get agreement on making the drivers) you are in control of what you post on your Facebook account.

Granted someone could make a rude comment about you but you'll get an alert that you've been tagged in a post if they're stupid enough to do so.

So that aside, if you don't want the world to know that you've just painted obscene messages on your Dad's shed, don't post it on Facebook. On second thoughts, you probably don't want to send an MMS on your mobile either as it might get forwarded from there as well.

I'm hearing too many stories at the moment of people posting comments to Facebook without realising that the wrong people might see them. If you think a post might get you into trouble, don't make it.

Oh and the laziness. Well, you've sort of got me there. I've got around 300 friends at the moment so making this change for every single one of them will take ages and there's no easy way of seeing how far through I've got.

If you've read all of this, still want to be my friend (on Facebook or real life) and still want me to block your updates, I have the following proposition. Either give me a compelling reason such as going undercover for the Police or MI5, or send a small donation towards the team Christmas Lunch at the Computeractive Offices. We'll have a great time, even though sadly you won't get any news from Facebook about it