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Not all of Google Plus’s default privacy settings are the best, but they’re certainly better than Facebook’s default security settings. My personal preference, and my recommendation for all things internet is to make everything private, by default, and only expose the things you explicitly intended to expose.
Also check out The Ultimate Collection of Google+ (Google Plus) How-To’s
To get to your G+ privacy settings, click on your name in the upper-right corner and choose “Privacy”:
In the “Profile and privacy” section, click the “Edit visibility on profile” button beside “Public profile information”. Let’s lock that down and only expose what you’re comfortable with sharing with your enemies and strangers on the net who want to hack your account and steel your identity and harm your children… Yah, seriously, that’s how you need to think about security on the internet because that’s what’s really going on.
First, let’s lock down your circles. There’s no good reason people that intend to do you harm should be able to see your list of friends or the circles you’ve created. Below your profile photo is a “View all” link for your circles. Click that.
It’s safe to check “Show people in” (see image below) because this is just what YOU see. BUT! Under “Who can see this?”, by default, you’ll find that “Anyone on the web” is selected. Change that to “Your circles”. Now, only people you’ve accepted into your circles can see it. To be honest, I’m not real sure yet what “it” is, but it has to do with friends and circles, so don’t be sharing that with strangers.
Also, uncheck “Show people who have added you to circles”. This actually might be safe, but until I know for sure, I’m recommending unchecking it. I don’t know if this means just show them on your profile page just for YOU to see, or if it’s for more than you. When in doubt, assume it’s shared publicly to everyone on the internet, so, uncheck it.
Now, on the right, is a list of all the items on your profile. Click each one and choose wisely who can see it. I’ve selected “Your Circles” for most, if not all of them that can be changed.
As you click each item below, think about someone wanting to steal your identity, find out where you live, harm your children, and finding your profile… what sort of information would you NOT want them to have? Remember, if you expose bits and pieces of who you are, they can put those together to form a full identity, so be careful what you expose. Again, my recommendation is set them all to “Your circles” or “Only you”.
Next, let’s secure your photos. Click on the “Photos” tab. Note (image below) that it says, “Albums in the Photos tab are visible only to people they’ve been shared with.” THIS IS NOT TRUE!!!! I tested this myself and from one Google+ account that had not been invited to the other, and I was able to see all the photos! Those two accounts were “strangers to each other”. This must be a bug, but now that we know that your photos are public, uncheck “Show this tab on your profile” and change “People whose tags of you are automatically approved to link to your Profile:” to “Your Circles”. When I did that, my “stranger” account could no longer see my photos, but my friends still can.
Uncheck “Show photo geo location information in newly uploaded albums and photos.”. Until we know this security feature works appropriately, let’s uncheck it. Remember, this is still a beta product and not all the security is working properly. Secondly, I recommend against publishing geo tag data in your photos unless there’s a specific reason to do so, and then, make sure that only people you trust can see it. This one is actually more critical than you know. If you publish your Christmas morning photos with Geotagging information and your photos are viewable by the general public, you’ve just told all the pedophiles on the internet where your children live!!!! Seriously, this is really important. You should hide your home address from everyone except people you’re inviting over to your house. Don’t ever link your home address with anything publicly available on the internet.
Click “Save”.
Now, click on the “Videos” tab and uncheck, “Show this tab on your profile”. I haven’t uploaded any videos yet, so I’ve not had a chance to test this.
Click “Save”.
+1’s… (see image below) In case you don’t know what this is, let me explain. You know how all those web sites you visit have a little button bar with a twitter icon, a Facebook icon, etc…? You click that and you share the web page with people that are following you on Twitter or share it with your friends on FB? +1 is Google’s version of that and it’s showing up all over the internet now. Already, +1’s are more popular than Twittering. I’ve even got a +1 button at the bottom of this article. If you find this useful, please click it! 
Anyway, use your best judgment as to whether or not you want your +1’s publicly broadcast and permanently known to be from YOU by anyone on the internet. So, don’t be +1’ing those NSFW sites! Keep in mind, if you make it public, your current and potential future employers and mates will see what you’re recommending for people to read. If you’re going to +1 NSFW sites, then I recommend making this viewable only to your circles. If you’re OK with letting the whole world know it’s YOU that is recommending the page, this is probably safe to make public. Since I blog a lot, I’m making this one all the way public for myself. User your best judgment.
Click “Save”.
Buzz: WTF is Buzz anyway? Seriously, I really don’t know what this is. Google published it like a year or so ago and it flopped. I’m guessing because hardly anyone else knows what it is either. When it doubt, make it all private. I unchecked all the check boxes, just to be safe.
Click “Save”.
There! Those are my preliminary security recommendations. As I get more familiar with this service, I’ll update these security settings.
[Update]: Now, it wouldn’t be a full security article (and it still won’t be full) if I didn’t mention the user profile name rules that Google has been enforcing lately. On Saturday, 7/23/2011, I believe it was, I discovered I couldn’t post any updates, I couldn’t invite anyone, and my circles were uneditable. I figured, well, it must be bugs in the beta, but after a day or so, I finally went to my G+ profile page and there was a message there saying my account had been disabled because my pseudonym of CSharpner wasn’t acceptable and they wanted my real name. They have since restored my account and I’d like to thank whoever did that as well as my followers on G+ that petitioned Google to restore my account. But, as best I know, their policy is still that they want you to use your real life name and not your online handle or pseudonym. In spite of the awesome security features built into G+, this policy of forcing real names cancels out all the coolness of the built in security. A lot of people post political, religious, and other opinions online with the freedom of speech of knowing they can freely say it without harm coming to them in their real life with their employers, family, strangers, or coworkers because they say it under their pseudonym, giving them some important shielding. Battered wives, rape victims, etc… all need the ability to freely speak without fear of retribution from their attackers, to name just a few examples of why it’s incredibly important to be able to use pseudonyms. I call on Google to “do no evil” by allowing this incredibly important protection of online life.
I don’t normally ask this, but since this is security related and we’re on the ground floor with this new product, if you find this useful, please forward it to your Google+ friends. The more people that get their security tightened up at the beginning, the better off we’ll all be!
See this image? 
You’ll find an actual working version of it at the bottom of this article. Please click the appropriate buttons in it to let your friends know about this article so they too can tighten up their security!
Check back later for updates too!
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Good Luck!
