How do I control who can read my journal entries? What are security settings?
You can control who can read your entries by setting security levels for them, either when you post them or by editing them later. There are four security levels available: Public, Friends, Custom, and Private. You will always be able to see your own entries when logged into your account, no matter what security setting you use.
PUBLIC: All visitors to the site can read Public entries, even if they are not logged into a LiveJournal account.
FRIENDS: People you list as a friend can read entries with the Friends security level. If someone lists you as a friend, they will not be able to view your Friends-only entries, unless you choose to add them as a friend in return.
CUSTOM: A chosen group of people you list as a friend, as defined by custom friends groups you create, can read a Custom entry. See http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=102 for details on how to create and use custom friends groups.
PRIVATE: Only you can read your Private entries.
AUTHENTICATION
LiveJournal uses cookies stored in a visitor's web browser to track who is logged in and show them any non-Public entries they are authorized to see. If you are authorized to see an entry, it will appear when you view the user's journal directly or when you view the Friends page of anyone who lists that user as a friend. This means that your own non-Public entries will appear when you view the Friends page of anyone who lists you as a friend. However, the other user will not see those entries unless you have authorized them to do so.
USING THE WEB INTERFACE
You can assign a security level to an entry when posting it with the full Update Page at http://www.livejournal.com/update.bml?mode=full. In the "Optional Settings" section at the bottom there is a dropdown list labeled "Security Level". Select the security level you want to assign to the entry. The Custom option will only appear if you have already created custom friends groups.
If you want to change the security level of an entry you already posted, you can edit the entry. It is not possible to edit the security level of your entire journal at once.
USING A DOWNLOADED CLIENT
Many clients available for download allow you to set security levels for journal entries. For information on a specific client, consult its documentation or its menu options.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
While you can control who is allowed to read your journal entries, it is not possible to find out exactly who is viewing your journal. However, you can add a hit counter provided by an external site, in order to count the number of visitors or record their IP addresses.
FURTHER READING
If someone lists me as a Friend will they see my Friends-Only entries?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=35
How do I make all my journal entries Friends-Only, Private, or Public?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=120
How do I edit or delete a journal entry I wrote?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=2
The login page
http://www.livejournal.com/login.bml
What is a downloadable client? Where can I get one?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=158
How do I track people who visit my journal? How do I add a counter to my
journal?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=188
What are custom friends groups? How do I use them?
A custom friends group is a group you create which contains part or all of the people on your Friends list. These groups can be used to post entries which only part of your friends can see or to display only certain friends on your Friends page.
Custom friends groups can be created and edited at http://www.livejournal.com/friends/editgroups.bml. To create a group, click the "New" button, type a name for the group in the window that pops up, then click "OK". You can create up to 30 custom friends groups. Further options for editing groups are described below.
RESTRICTING WHO CAN READ YOUR ENTRIES
When posting an entry, you can set the security level to "custom" and select one or more friends groups that can view the entry. When posting from the full Update Page at http://www.livejournal.com/update.bml?mode=full, select "custom" from the "Security Level" drop-down. A list of your custom friends groups will appear, and you can check the box next to each friends group you wish to use for that entry. If you select more than one custom friends groups for an entry, the entry will be visible to any user who is in at least one of the groups you selected.
Your browser must allow the use of JavaScript for the custom security level to work. If the checkboxes do not appear, your browser does not currently allow JavaScript. In most browsers, an option to allow JavaScript is available in the browser preferences. Consult your browser's documentation if you need help with enabling JavaScript.
FILTERING YOUR FRIENDS PAGE
You can use custom friends groups to view your Friends page with only entries from members of a specific group or groups. From http://www.livejournal.com/friends/filter.bml you can select one or more groups to view entries from. You can also go directly to a filtered version of your Friends page by appending the group's name to the end of your Friends page URL. For example, if your username was "exampleusername" and you had a friends group called "group1", you could visit http://www.livejournal.com/users/exampleusername/friends/group1 to see only entries from members of "group1".
If you create a custom friends group named "Default View", visiting your standard Friends page will display only entries from members of the "Default View" group. To see entries from all of your friends, you would need to visit http://www.livejournal.com/users/exampleusername/friends/?filter=0.
If you have marked a friends group as public, anyone may view your filtered Friends page by viewing the URL with the group name appended. If the group is private, other users will receive an error message when visiting the filtered URL. Similarly, if your "Default View" group is public, then all visitors to your Friends page will see only entries from members of that group. If the "Default View" group is private, other users will see a regular Friends page with entries from all of your friends.
EDITING GROUPS WITH THE WEB INTERFACE
As well as creating groups, http://www.livejournal.com/friends/editgroups.bml also allows you to edit, delete and perform other modifications on your custom friends groups.
You can view which users are members of a group by clicking on the group name to highlight it. To move users in and out of the group, highlight their names and click on the >> or << buttons.
If you want to rename a group, you can do so by highlighting the group name, clicking the "Rename" button, typing a new name in the pop-up window, and clicking "OK". When renaming a group, all entries filtered to the old group name will still be visible to members of the new group name. If you want to delete one group and create another, you should not do this by renaming an existing group and changing its members.
To change the order of groups, highlight a group and click the "Move up" or "Move down" buttons. When posting an entry to a custom group, the list of groups will be in the order you have placed them in while editing.
By default, friends groups are private and no one but you can see their names or who the members are. If you would like other users to be able to filter your Friends page by using your friends groups, you can highlight a group name and click the "Public" button. Groups which you have made public will say "(public)" after the group name.
If you want to delete a group, highlight its name and click the "Delete" button. You will need to confirm the deletion by clicking "OK". Any entries filtered to a deleted group will still have the "custom" security, but with no group selected, so they will only be visible to you. If you later recreate a group with the same name, the entries will not automatically be filtered to that group. You will need to edit the security level on each entry if you want other people to see it.
USING A DOWNLOADED CLIENT
Many clients available for download also allow you to create and edit custom friends groups, and to post entries with custom security. For information on a specific client, consult its documentation or menu options.
If you create new friends groups through the web interface while your downloaded client is running, you may need to restart the client program in order to view and post to your new friends groups.
FURTHER READING
How do I control who can read my journal entries? What are security settings?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=24
The Log In page
http://www.livejournal.com/login.bml
How do I edit or delete a journal entry I wrote?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=2
What is a downloadable client? Where can I get one?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=158
