How to Hide Your Google Plus Circles

Google Plus offers granular privacy controls that are quick and easy to manage (and less confusing than the labyrinthine privacy controls on Facebook). One feature that is worth checking out is the function that lets you control what people can see about your circles.

By default, when you look at someone’s Google Plus profile, you can see, under their name and thumbnail a list of the people that the person has added to their circles. In another box you can see people who have added the person to their circles.

You can hide these from your profile altogether, or just from people who are not in your circles. Here’s how you do it – first go to your Google Plus profile and click Edit profile. On top of the “IN YOUR CIRCLES” box you will see a little icon. Mouse over this and you can see the privacy setting.

Now, to edit the setting, click the box, or the icon, and you will see an edit screen.

You can choose to hide the box completely, or you can select to leave it public but filter which circles you want to show. For example, let’s say you have created a circle called “Celebrities” and you want to only show the celebs you are following, just choose the Celebrities circle and only those people will appear in the box that shows the public who you follow. No one can see the names of your circles – that’s private to you.

You can also choose to show the box only to people in your circles. This is like saying “Friends only” on Facebook, but it’s better than that because Google Plus circles do not require two-way acceptance. If you put someone in a circle, you don’t need their permission (just as you wouldn’t ask their permission when you add them to your address book). By adding them to one of your circles, you are basically allowing them to see anything you decide to show to people in that circle.

Author: Steve Masters     Steve Masters on the Web Steve Masters on Facebook Steve Masters on Twitter Steve Masters on LinkedIn Steve Masters on Google Plus Steve Masters RSS Feed

Steve is a Campaign Delivery Manager for Vertical Leap in Portsmouth. Prior to joining the company in 2012. He started his professional life as a magazine journalist, working across music and women's titles between 1987 and 1998. He has worked purely online since joining MSN in 1998 and then... View full profile

This article originally appeared on Red Rocket Media and has been republished with permission.

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