 Recent updates to Facebook have left plenty of people confused and scared about which of their posts and activities are visible to others. Since the update, I've commonly seen comments like this: **Hey my FB friends, do me a favor: please hover over my name here, wait for the box to load
and then hover over the "Subscribe" link. Then uncheck the "Comments and likes" choice. I would
rather my comments on friends' posts not be made public. Thanks** Then repost if you don't
want your EVERY MOVE posted on the right for everyone to see! It's understandable that some people aren't happy many of their actions are now appearing in their friends' news tickers. If all your friends do happen to follow those steps, your actions won't show up in any news tickers. However, your updates are still available to your friends on your Wall, like they've always been. So, yes, removing your updates from the ticker makes them less obvious, but it doesn't hide them completely.
So, what to do if you want to hide all your actions? There's no easy way to just turn them all off. But who sees your status updates is determined by what you're doing and the permissions you've set for parts of your profile. To check your permissions, edit your profile (click your name at the top and then click the Edit Profile button). Use the list on the left to access the various parts of your profile. 
To the right of each component of your profile is a security icon that controls who can see that part of your profile. It also determines who can get updates in their ticker when you make changes to that section. So, if you have your Books section set to "Friends", then when you add a book, it will show up as an update in the tickers of your friends. 
The same applies when you make a post. Use the security dropdown to determine who can see your post. 
That's pretty straightforward. It starts to get complicated, though, when you comment on or "like" someone else's post. In those cases, the security is based on what the original poster set when they made the post. So, as an example, let's assume you have a friend named Joe who posts a status update. When you comment on his update, whether your comment shows up other people's ticker depends on the security of Joe's status update: - If Joe's update was set to "Friends", then your comment shows in the ticker of any friends you and Joe have in common.
- If Joe's update was set to "Friends of Friends", then your comment shows in the ticker of your friends (since they are friends of yours and you're a friend of Joe).
- If Joe's update was set to "Public", then your comment shows in the ticker of your friends and anyone subscribed to you.
You can view the security of any post by looking at the security icon at the bottom of the post. It will be either an icon of a friend, Earth (public), or a gear (custom). In the case of custom, hold the cursor over the icon for details on who can see the post. Regarding subscriptions, Facebook now allows users to subscribe to other users' pages without being friends. Subscribers to your page who are not friends or friends of your friends will only be able to see items marked as "public" and will only get notified when you like or comment on others' posts marked as public. By default, people are not allowed to subscribe to your page. If you want to enable subscriptions, go to your Profile page, click the Subscriptions link at top left, and then enable subscriptions with the button at the top of the page. And a further note on subscriptions and how they work with the ticker: your ticker shows updates from your friends and from others to which you've subscribed. So, if you have access for parts of your profile set to "Friends of Friends" and some of those friends of friends have subscribed to you, then updates to those parts of your profile will show up in their ticker. I wouldn't be surprised if Facebook ends up adding a security option to allow users to hide their updates from other users' tickers. They've presumably avoided it because they're trying to encourage users to be comfortable sharing their information with those they trust. One big step Facebook has taken in that direction is the addition of lists. Lists have been around for a while but they've recently been made more useful, and they've added Smart Lists, which automatically build themselves based on certain common items in your friends' profiles. For example, it typically creates lists for Family, Close Friends, and for places you've worked and gone to school. You can also create your own custom lists. You can click on a list name to view updates from just members of that list. 
You can apply lists to any of the parts of your profile so that only members of the list will be able to see that section of your profile. And you can use lists when you post status updates to allow only list members to see the update. When you write your post, just choose the list from the security dropdown. You can also choose Custom to post your update to specific people without creating a list. Facebook has become a reasonable alternative to sending out certain types of group emails when everyone is already a Facebook friend. Comments and likes on posts targeted to a group follow the same security rules as above: only people in the group see the new comments and your friends only see your comment on their ticker if they are also a member of the group. Lists are a great way to increase the amount of updates you post without having to worry about becoming a nuisance to all your friends. You may have hesitated to post certain updates about things happening in your town since many of your friends aren't in the area. Now, you can go ahead and make the post but target it to a group containing friends that live close to you. You might want to post family-related news just to your family. And now you can separate your updates into ones you post to just your close friends vs. those for everyone. Related:
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