Our posts about Facebook are the most popular ones that we create. In view of that, we’re going to do a series of videos about the whole Facebook process, from signing up to securing your privacy. It’s a big task but we’re pretty sure it will interest you. We’ll try to keep the videos short and entertaining. If you have comments or suggestions, please let us know.
We missed a couple of things in the video that we’ll correct next time but, for now, note two things. First, you can’t hide your current profile photo. Second, you can’t hide any of your background photos, the big ones at the top of your own timeline. If you’re concerned about privacy, make sure that these two things don’t reveal too much about you. We’ll get into these and other fine points of privacy next time.
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We’re still getting comments about Facebook and its arcane and obscure privacy settings. Not only are they as described, they are also well hidden. Here’s a short set of tips for you:
Things you can’t hide:
Cover photos are all public, all the time.
Profile thumbnails are all public, all the time.
Mobile albums, the ones you upload from your mobile device, seem to default to ‘public’. You have to change the setting to something else if you don’t want these pics to be wide open to the world.
Mutual friends can’t be hidden. You can hide your complete friend list but NOT mutual friends.
While you can’t hide your ‘About’ section, you can hide virtually all of the details in it.
Summation: Three sections can’t be hidden. These are Mutual Friends, Cover Photos and Profile Photo thumbnails.
Actions you can’t hide:
Photo likes and comments cannot be hidden. If you like Jim or Jane’s photo, everyone that can see the photo will know it. Ditto for comments. There is no way around this. Like something that isn’t under your control and everyone who can see that ‘something’ will see your like or your comment.
The act of liking a page. While you can hide the fact that you like a page, either by hiding the whole section or by quickly removing the action from your activity log, the initial like might show up somewhere. If the act of liking a page can get you into trouble, don’t like it. Read the next tip.
TIP: Facebook now tells you that “If you hide a section, individual stories can still appear on your Timeline, in News Feed and elsewhere on Facebook.” Change the word ‘section’ to just about anything that you do or share on Facebook and you’ll be well on your way to seeing that virtually nothing on Facebook is private. Even if it is private to your friends and the world at large, it is not private to employees of Facebook. OK?
Groups:
If joining or starting a group will cause you problems, don’t do it. Group settings are up to the group admin and can be changed at any time. If being in a group threatens your privacy or home life, don’t join it.
The Answer to Facebook’s (Anti)-Privacy Settings:
Start a fresh, anonymous profile, one that doesn’t reveal anything about the real you, and use it to enjoy everything you can’t hide on your real profile. Keep the new profile open in another browser and you can blithely click like or comment or post anything you want. You can relax and be your real self without harming anyone else. Go for it!
Facebook changes frequently. Keep up with these changes by Liking our Facebook page. Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook
It’s late August and very hot here in Toronto. Time for a rehash of some of our most popular Facebook posts, then we’re off to sit poolside with a cool drink and a good book. We hope your summer is going well, wherever you are.
TIP: Each link will open in a new window/tab. That way you can read the post, close the window and we’ll still here here waiting.
Facebook loves to clog up your email inbox with ‘important’ notifications. If you’ve made the mistake of using your primary email address to sign up for Facebook, this will create literally thousands of emails over just a few months, provided that you are an average user. Here’s how to cut those emails out of your life. If you’re on Facebook every day, you will receive these notices through your profile anyway so the emails are not important.
1. We’ll use the new Facebook look for this post but the old look is very similar. Up on the top right of any Facebook page, click the down arrow/gear icon and look for the word ‘Settings’:
Settings first.
2. Look for Notifications on the top left:
Notifications is next.
3. Email notifications is what we want here:
Email notifications now.
4. Facebook has, believe it or not, sixty-seven topics that they want to email you about…every time one of them changes. We can’t fit them all onto one screen, we need two:
First page of 67 possible notifications.
Second page. How can there be 67?
As you can see, we’ve unchecked everything. This account is not our main email account so we don’t want it cluttered up with thousands of emails. If it was our main email, it would be even worse. If you use your main email account for Facebook, you might want to leave the security notifications checked but that’s up to you. We have SMS or text messaging set up if anything bad happens to our account. We’ll do a post on Facebook security soon, just to make sure you know how to protect your account.
That’s it! No more ridiculous emails from Facebook. If you want us to do a topic on something specific, let us know. We love comments!
As of November 7, 2012, Facebook has completely changed its privacy settings for pages that you like. Pages include artists pages, tech pages, etc. Here is what we’ve found so far:
1. Your activity log is one place to start. Get to this page by clicking on Activity Log from your Facebook timeline. The first page that comes up is your own posts and posts from whatever apps (games) you have used recently. What’s new here is the Start Tour button. That should clue you in to the fact that something has changed.
Click on your Activity Log under your cover photo on your timeline.
2. Click on the Start Tour button and this pops up. The settings described here affect only the things that you have posted.
This is the ‘friends only’ icon.
3. Once you click Okay, another message pops up. This one is key to the new Facebook privacy…or lack of it. It’s worth emphasizing, we think: Hidden posts may appear in other places on Facebook. It seems now that there is no privacy on Facebook at all, right?
Read these words carefully. ‘Hidden posts may appear in other places on Facebook.’
4. Click Okay once this has settled in. The next box says that you can sort out your activities by clicking on the box up at the top.
Sort through your activities by clicking on the box near the top.
5. Here is the list of your possible activities. Finally, your Likes appear.
Click on Likes.
6. The page that comes up when you click Likes isn’t your page likes. These are your photo likes and comment likes. Nothing has changed with these likes. The photo below shows that this user, Emily Cheng, has set her photos to ‘Public’. Anyone who gets to her profile can see her photos, not a setting we would recommend.
Don’t set your photos to Public, that’s our advice.
Remember that the settings shown here are completely out of your control. We think that this is shown in order to warn you about who can see that you liked the photo. In this case, it’s possible that everyone on Facebook could potentially see that you liked it, not just this person’s friends.
7. Next, we want to show you what your options are when you like someone’s photo. There is only one. The first, shown below, seems to suggest that you can keep this like from your timeline.
If it’s ‘Allowed on Timeline’, you’d think there was a ‘Not allowed on Timeline’ choice. There isn’t.
8. The only thing you can do to hide your like from your timeline is to, you guessed it, ‘unlike’ the photo. That is the only choice you have. When you click the circle to the right, this is what you see:
Unlike is the only choice you have to keep this like off of your Timeline.
9. When it comes to liking a page, you have one more option.
You can hide this like from your Timeline.
Hiding this like from your timeline may or may not keep it hidden from your friends. Let’s head over to another area of Facebook to see if we can keep this ‘like’ away from your news feed.
10. On the same page that you are on now, your Activity Log, look up on the top left. You’ll see this:
Click on the words Activity log, then on Likes.
11. Once you click the word Likes, this page will pop up. It looks like you can’t do anything here but hover your mouse up on the top right. You’ll see the word Edit appear.
Hover your cursor on the top right and Edit will appear. Click it.
12. This next page is quite empty and it looks as if there is no way to edit anything. Hover your cursor over the name of any like here and this is the menu that pops up:
Here are your choices for these Likes.
13. Three choices are available. Show in News Feed, unchecked Show in News Feed meaning ‘not Show in News Feed’, and Unlike. You can also create a new list. More on that next time.
That’s it. Once you have unchecked the ‘Show in News Feed’ box, make sure that you click Done Editing to save your changes.
OK, so far so good right? Well, not really. We suspect that this whole thing is in a state of flux. As you saw before, Facebook is telling you that things you hide may be visible elsewhere on Facebook. That kind of sums up our feelings about all of this hiding from your news feed or timeline. These items may or may not be hidden at all. Yesterday, for example, we played around with hiding the fact that we liked the Mashable site. Even though it was a hidden activity, hidden from our timeline and hidden from our news feed, there it was in plain sight when we checked from another profile on two different browsers, even after we refreshed the page again and again. Nothing was hidden. Today, it isn’t there but yesterday it was. Go figure!
We love to hear from you. Keep your comments and suggestions coming. If you have problems, let us know. We’re here to help.
Thanks for reading!
a little bit of hi-tech, a little bit of common sense and a lot of fun
