You may have seen in the news lately that some gay students in Texas were outed in a Facebook group, totally without their consent. This outing was not done maliciously but, seeing as how Texas is quite backward, caused these students significant grief and pain. You might think that you have a choice when it comes to Facebook groups but, unfortunately, you don’t. Anyone who is a friend of yours on Facebook can freely add you to a group. There is no way to opt-out of this, you can’t stop any of your friends from adding you to any group they start. Here’s a perfect example of what we’re talking about:
Seeing as how you can’t opt-out of groups, there are only two ways that you can prevent being added to Facebook groups. The first is simple, check your friend list. If you have some practical jokers there, get rid of them as friends. As we’ve shown you, they can add you to any group they want and, until you quit the group, you can’t do anything about it.
The second option is virtually impossible, but if you’ve got a lot of time, maybe you can do it. Simply put, Facebook has a maximum limit of 300 groups that any one person can join. Therefore, if you start 300 groups and add yourself to them, no one will be able to add you to any group they start. Yes, it is a waste of time, for sure.
Over the next few posts, we’re going to tell you everything you need to know about Facebook groups. Here’s a shot of the group privacy menu:
Open, closed or secret. You decide.
Stay tuned. We’ll show you everything you need to know about groups…except how to opt-out. You can’t. Remember that.
Recently, a couple of our readers asked questions about hiding Facebook page likes. We’ve written about this before but we think we need to clarify this whole topic. You have to remember that we have readers from across the globe, many of whom may not be proficient in English. We’ve found it useful to explain things in several different ways, hoping that one explanation will finally make sense to a portion of our audience. Here we go:
1. We all know what a ‘page like’ is, right? If you go to a company’s page or a singer’s page on Facebook, you will see a large ‘Like’ button. It looks like this:
We’ve all seen it, right?
2. If you click that like button, you will receive updates from that page on your news feed. Unlike adding a friend, liking a page sets up a one-way communication link between the page and you, not between you and the page. Sure, you can comment on the page or on anything the page owner posts but they will not receive your updates or posts. It’s one-way only.
3. If you have hidden your page likes, as described here: Hide Page Likes, none of your friends will be able to see which pages you have clicked ‘like’ on. (There is an exception which we will describe below). If you’ve already hidden your page likes, this article isn’t for you…except for the glitch that we will explain later.
4. Let’s say you haven’t hidden your page likes but you don’t want to broadcast the fact that you like a page. Here’s how to do that. We’ll be using the Psych page as an example. This is what it looks like before you click the like button:
Facebook Psych Page
5. Click the Like button and you’ll see this menu pop down:
Here is your chance to hide this particular like from your news feed.
6. Let’s uncheck the ‘Show in News Feed’:
This page like will not show up on your news feed to your friends.
7. OK, here’s the explanation: If you’ve hidden your page likes, this won’t show up on your news feed or in your likes box. If you haven’t hidden your page likesbut you unchecked the ‘Show in News Feed’ section, this won’t show up but it will be in your page likes section. Got it? There are some exceptions to all of this. Read on:
Facebook Page Like Glitch – this is the exception to the rule
Remember those like boxes, the ones on your timeline that have titles such as TV shows or Movies, etc? Believe it or not, some page likes fall into two categories. Take our Psych example. Yes, it is a Facebook page and, yes, we have liked it. Since our Page Likes are hidden, it would make sense that anything to do with our liking that Psych page would be hidden, wouldn’t it? Well, it isn’t.
Since that Psych page is a TV page, the fact that we liked it is visible in our Favorites under Television. Yes, the page like is hidden but the Psych page is still listed in our Likes/Favorites/Television section. Curious, right?
What should you do? We suggest that you completely hide all of your favorites. Maybe you don’t like a singing star’s music but you do like the photos on that person’s page. If you don’t hide your Music Favorites, that page will show up there. Any page that intersects with a favorite, could be music, TV, games, athletes, etc., will show up in two places on your Facebook Timeline page. If there is any question about whether you want your friends to know what pages/stars/movies/singers/sport/whatever you like, then hide them all.
Tip: Many employers use your Facebook profile to check you out before they hire you. Whether or not you agree with this, they do it. Let’s say you like the TV show ‘Breaking Bad’ or ‘Weeds’. Some conservative employers might just assume that you’re more interested in drugs than you should be, at least if you want to work with them. Do you see the ramifications here? Mull that over while you hide all of your likes.
Tip: Remember that you can hide any of your likes except photos and mutual friends. You can hide your friends but you can’t hide your mutual friends. Keep that in mind.
Thanks for reading. We’re going to to a whole post on that glitch, just to highlight it. Comments and questions are welcome!
Admit it. Some of your friends are pests, right? They play too many games on Facebook and you get all of their annoying game updates. Your Facebook page is spammed with these continuous and obnoxious bits of junk. Here’s how to block these updates before they reach your Facebook page.
1. Here’s an example of the kind of update we’re talking about:
An update from The Ville.
2. Up on the top right of this person’s game post, look for the little down arrow icon when you hover your cursor (mouse) over that spot. Here’s what we mean:
Hover then click the word Hide…
3. The word ‘Hide’ has three periods after it. This means that there are some choices available after you click Hide. You are hiding this single game update but Facebook allows you to hide more than that. Here are the choices:
OK, the story is hidden but do you want to hide everything from The Ville (yes, if you don’t play it).
4. The single post is hidden now and all of the updates from The Ville are hidden too, as long as you click Hide all stories from The Ville. But what if that one friend plays a dozen or more games? Let’s hide every game update from this person. Click on ‘Change what updates you get from…’ :
Deselect Games and anything else that might spam your news feed.
TIP: We were having a problem with one particular Facebook game, Slotomania. No matter what we did, we kept getting updates on ‘So and so ‘likes’ a post made by someone else about Slotomania. Even though we hid all updates from that one game, we kept getting what looked like updates. Only when we deselected ‘Comments and likes’ did we actually stop those annoying posts. Unfortunately we don’t get any of that person’s likes, either.
Hopefully this post will help you clean up your newsfeed. Questions or comments are welcome.
Even though you may have your Facebook contact info privacy settings for your phone number set to ‘friends only’ or ‘only me’, did you know that anyone can find you on Facebook using that phone number? Read that again. You’re right. It doesn’t make sense. But, that’s Facebook, right? Read on and we’ll tell you how to stop complete strangers from stalking you and finding you on Facebook.
1. Go to your privacy settings page. Here is how you get there:
Down arrow, then click on Privacy Settings.
2. On the page that pops up, look for the words ‘How you connect’. This is where you edit the settings for how people search for you. If you don’t change the settings here, anyone can find you using your phone number, the one that you might have given Facebook, or your email address. This is how it looks:
How you connect, that’s what you’re looking for.
3. This ‘How you connect’ setting is not overridden by your basic info settings. If you have your phone number listed in your basic info and if you have that set to ‘friends only’ or only me’, anyone can still search for you using that phone number. Sad but very true. Here are the settings that we suggest:
We suggest that you set this to ‘Friends’.
4. If your friends happen to know your phone number, they can find you on Facebook. If they know your email address, they can find you. Then again, if anyone knows your phone number or email, they can find you on Facebook…unless you change this setting. Sure, anyone can search for your real name and they may or may not find you, depending on how many other people share your name and whether you used your real name or your nickname when you signed up. In other words, people can still find you, old school friends, ex-lovers, whoever, but they won’t be able to link up your phone number to your Facebook account. Change it now!
Working backwards here, your friends won’t be able to see your phone number on Facebook if you have this particular privacy setting:
You decide…Only me or Friends or whatever you want.
OK, if your friends already know your phone number, that’s fine. With your phone number privacy set to ‘only me’ , at least they won’t be able to find the number on Facebook. If you set this to ‘friends’, then they can find your number here. Either way, using the privacy settings outlined above, no one will be able to search for you using your phone number.
Are we chock full of paranoia? Not really. Consider this scenario: You apply for a job. Obviously, you have to provide a telephone contact number. If that number is linked to your Facebook account, the person who is hiring you can search for you on Facebook using that number. Like it or not, they can find out quite a bit about you, depending on your privacy settings. If you remove your email and your phone number from your search settings (unfortunately you can’t separate them), then no one can find you that way.
Lastly, should Facebook even have your phone number? Think about that for a while. Sure, they say that they need it in case your account is compromised. Hmmmm, really? Your phone number is a direct link to you and/or your home. Mull that over for a while.
Irfanview, available here: Irfanview , is our favorite ‘free and fast’ photo software. While we don’t use Irfanview to manipulate images (retouching, etc.), we depend on it for cropping and resizing. One thing that we really love is the batch conversion feature. Our post today is a short guide about how to use this menu:
1. Download and install Irfanview. Accept the screen that asks you if you want Irfanview to associate itself with your image files. You can always change that later but there is no reason to do that.
2. For this lesson, double-click on one image in a folder of many images. Irfanview will open the image.
3. On the top left, look for File and click on it. The menu that comes down looks like this:
Look for Batch/Conversion Rename
4. Click on Batch/Conversion Rename and this menu will pop up:
Make sure you’ve opened one photo in a folder of many photos.
5. First, let’s ‘Add’ some photos from the top right box to the bottom right box. Either choose a few or choose ‘Add all’. The bottom pane will fill up accordingly as shown here:
The box is full.
6. Those are the images that we will work on today. Next, look for the Advanced button shown here:
Click on the Advanced button.
7. Once you hit the Advanced button, this menu pops up:
This looks complicated but it’s not too bad.
8. With this one menu, you can crop, resize, flip, convert to grayscale and so on. Today, we’re going to resize all of the photos in the selection box to 90% of their original size. Make sure that Resize is checked then choose a percentage of the original, in this case 90%. Then, make sure that you have selected Preserve aspect ratio (proportional). We don’t use the Resample function but you can judge for yourself if this is necessary. Once all that is done, click on OK.
TIP: The most important thing in the previous menu is the ‘Overwrite existing files’ selection. Make sure that you uncheck this if you don’t put the processed results in another folder. If you don’t, you’ll lose the original files. Not a good plan, Stan.
9. Back to the main Batch/Conversion menu. In the ‘Output directory for result files’ , create another folder for the smaller files. We have named this ‘102_fuji SMALLER’ in this example. Doing this means that you keep the originals as they are and you’re putting the smaller versions in a completely different place. Smaller images are handy when you are uploading an album to Facebook, for example. Then, look for the Start Batch button.
Click the Start Batch button to start the processing.
10. Here’s what you see when Irfanview is processing the images:
Irfanview has finished the processing with no errors. Yay!
11. Depending on the speed of your computer, the size of the original photos and some other variables, this process might take a while. As long as you have chosen a different directory for the output files, as opposed to replacing the originals, you’re safe. If you’ve made an error, usually done when cropping a group of photos, then you can simply delete the process folder and start over again. Whatever you do, don’t overwrite the originals.
If you have time, play around with this menu. Someday when you have 100 pics to adjust, you’ll be ready.
Thanks for reading!
a little bit of hi-tech, a little bit of common sense and a lot of fun
