Category Archives: Facebook Ad Privacy Settings

Adjust Default Privacy Settings, Controlled sharing, Facebook, Facebook Ad Privacy Settings, Facebook Groups, Facebook Tricks, Layered Privacy, Turn off location mapping

Facebook Safety Tips

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We were adjusting a few things on one of our accounts last week using the ‘View As’ feature. It must have been the first time we had used this tool because this message popped up:

Photo of Facebook's View As warning
Seems like nothing is really private, right?

 

Read that carefully folks. We’ve said it before but it’s worth repeating here: Don’t put anything on Facebook that you’ll regret later on, even if you hide it. Someone will almost certainly find it.

At about the same time, we discovered that your group affiliation is very visible, even if you hide everything about your groups from your profile. We checked one of our profiles from a different browser and there they were, all of our groups at the bottom of our profile. We’re pretty sure we weren’t signed into Facebook on that browser and had clicked on one of the facepiles on a site that we use. If we ever duplicate that glitch, we’ll be sure to save some screen captures.

Although we have written many posts about how to hide this and how to control access to that, there is one main point to keep in mind. A simple glitch on Facebook’s site has the potential to reveal anything or everything about you. That’s something to remember every time you use the site. You must also remember that Facebook itself has access to your material. Any employee with the right type of credentials could sift through your private photos, notes and messages. You may not know this but Facebook uses offshore workers to control its censorship policies. Offshore here means ‘not in North America’. Think about that the next time you post something that you think is shared only with a few friends.

We’re convinced that Facebook’s privacy controls are weak and, in many cases, ineffective. Facebook wants you to feel warm and cozy when you are on their site, using their seemingly effective privacy controls but, as we have discovered in the photo above, the controls are meaningless.

Here some safety tips that we’ve come up with. From time to time, we may add more to this list.

1. If you access the Internet on a shared computer, which is a bad idea at the best of times, make sure you remember to sign out from Facebook and, of course, don’t allow any browser to remember your password.

2. Don’t join any groups that may cause problems for you or your family. The group privacy controls are independent of your own settings and are needlessly confusing. If you feel the need to join a sketchy group, read number 3.

3. Create a second profile using a nickname or fake name and, above all, don’t use your real photo. Tell Facebook that you’re in Zimbabwe or Timbuktu, lie about your age and/or gender and access whatever scandalous groups, pages, people that you want, all in complete privacy. Use a new email address from Outlook or Gmail, not your ISP’s email setup, and only use that for the fake Facebook account. Don’t use your real name for the email account, either. Just remember that the authorities can always trace your IP address so keep all of your activities aboveboard, right?

4. Only add people that you know or have been recommended by friends. You don’t have to accept invitations from strangers. If you don’t know someone, don’t confirm the friendship. If they really persist, just block them.

5. Keep track of how your cell phone or tablet interacts with Facebook. Are you sharing your location every time you post something? Is Facebook accessing your contact list? Are you sharing more than you think you are? You have to ask yourself if Facebook is so important in your life that you might risk your own personal safety to use it. What about your children? Do they access Facebook through their cell phones? How much are they sharing? Start a dialogue with them and get some answers.

6. Create a Facebook account just for your family. If you’re going to share family pics, complete with details of your home, cars and location, make sure they are only seen by trusted family members. Once you get family mixed up with friends, you lose control of your privacy. Your family already knows where you live so you don’t have to draw a map to your house, right? Don’t share that information on Facebook . Share the cute, cuddly dog/cat/kid pics but don’t share everything!

7. Weed out your friend list, keeping in mind number 4. If there is someone you don’t know or don’t remember how you added them, get rid of them. Keep your friend list to just that, friends. If you take our advice in number 3, you can add whoever the heck you want, they won’t any danger to you.

8. This is important so read it carefully. If you are sending a message to someone that includes any personal information or is on a topic that could potentially cause problems for you, don’t send it. Use a proper and secure email system for those messages. Facebook messages may seem like email but they really aren’t. Think of them more like an interoffice memo. Facebook itself is not secure, right? How could its email system be any different?

9. If you are a teacher, don’t even think about using your real name or photo for your Facebook profile. Use a nickname, one your students don’t know, and restrict your profile photo and cover photos to ones that reveal nothing about you. You can’t hide your profile photo or any of your cover photos. Remember that.

10. If you are not a teacher, read number 9. Profile and cover photos cannot be hidden.

11. We’ve left the best till last. Here’s what a facepile looks like:

Photo of Facebook Facepile
Is your face here? Is your child’s?

These are real and clickable Facebook profile photos. Anyone, anywhere in the world can click on those photos and be taken directly to a Facebook profile. Depending on how much information that person shares, in the blink of an eye a stranger could find out a city, a street and, sometimes, an address. Go back and read number 3 again. Can you see how this facepile relates to that suggestion? If you’re going to like a page, in this case Songza, why use your real profile photo? Use your fake account and go crazy liking this and that, knowing that no one can ever connect you to anything you do on Facebook. Think about it, OK?

Those are eleven suggestions to keep safe on Facebook. There are probably at least as many more but we’ll leave those for another post. Facebook is fun, addicting but, unfortunately, very deceptive in its practices.  The nice folks there want you to share everything, like everything and toss your privacy to the wind, just so they can make money selling your profile to advertisers. Don’t let them sell you out.

Thanks for reading! Comments and suggestions are welcome, as always.

 

Adjust Default Privacy Settings, Controlled sharing, Facebook, Facebook Ad Privacy Settings, facepiles

When Facebook Privacy Settings Don’t Work – Part Two (May 24, 2013)

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In our last post, we discussed some facepiles that we found on a website. To catch up with us, here’s the link to that post:   When Facebook Privacy Settings Don’t Work 

In the comment section at the bottom of the Songza page, each comment has a photo and a name attached. This is how it looks:

Photo of Songza Facepile
Comments with photos and a name on the Songza site.

 

As you can see, we get a bit of information from each commenter, always a photo and a name. Why is that? Because you cannot keep your Facebook name and profile photo private, they have to be shared as part of your agreement with Facebook. Just about everything else can be hidden. Just about, those are the key words.

Yesterday, we decided to play with the settings. First, we commented, then we checked the site from another browser, just to see what we could find out from the link to the Facebook profile. Turns out the comment had the name of the poster AND his location.

We headed back to our Facebook profile and hid where the poster was from, simply by setting Location (under Privacy, then About, then Location and Edit) to ‘Only Me’. Back to Songza to refresh the page and see what the comment looked like after the change. We were shocked to see that instead of the commenter’s location, we were now able to see the commenter’s age! Knowing full well that this person had hidden their age, we headed back to Facebook in another browser to check. Sure enough, the year of birth was set to ‘Only Me’. Yes, the day and month were there for friends to see but the person’s actual year of birth was set to ‘Only Me’.

Unfortunately, we cannot duplicate this error today. The point of this post is  to show you that, while you think your privacy settings work the way Facebook tells you they do, sometimes they don’t. If you have any piece of information on Facebook that you think is completely private, there are times when it isn’t. In our next post, we’ll offer a solution, one that we’ve suggested before. Stay tuned!

Thanks for reading!

Why not Like us on Facebook? Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook

 

 

Adjust Default Privacy Settings, Controlled sharing, Facebook, Facebook Ad Privacy Settings, facepiles

When Facebook Privacy Settings Don’t Work – May 24, 2013

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Just when you think that you’ve got your Facebook privacy settings perfectly tuned, a snag pops up. No matter how private you think your Facebook profile is, something always comes up to prove you wrong. This post is about an incident that occurred yesterday so it’s current and, to be frank, it’s troubling. See what you think.

TIP: This post might seem a bit convoluted, maybe confusing, but the point of it is this: Don’t assume that your privacy settings are locked and secure. Facebook treats its users as commodities, not individuals. You’re simply a means for them to make money. Don’t expect fair or even honest treatment.

Yesterday, May 23, 2103, one of our staffers was listening to music on Songza.com. Here’s the site: Songza – Listen to Music

To save time, he signed in with Facebook. That was a mistake, as it turns out. After choosing his playlist, this user noticed that Songza made use of  Facebook facepiles. Here is what a facepile looks like:

Photo of Facebook Facepiles 1
Technically, this isn’t a Facebook facepile but every user here is from Facebook.

You’ve seen these everywhere around the Internet, right? A box of faces from people who use or like the site. This particular facepile is a bit different from most. When you click on one of the faces, you get the user’s Songza profile, not their Facebook profile. Seems safe enough, right? We clicked on one user. This is what we found:

Photo of Facebook Facepiles 2
This is the user’s profile on Songza.

 

So far, this seems pretty straightforward, fairly innocuous. It’s not. This person’s profile name is cheryl.hatten.3  as you can see at the top. Is this that person’s Songza name or is it her Facebook name? We typed that name into the Facebook search slot and came up with this:

Photo of Facebook Facepiles 3
What’s this? A Facebook profile? Sure as hell is.

 

What do we know about Cheryl? We know her maiden name is Colley, that she probably lives in Lethbridge and that she most likely works for the Alberta Child Care Association. We also have a picture of someone who may be her daughter. Most likely Cheryl knows nothing about this. All she did was sign up for Songza by linking her Facebook account to a fairly popular and, supposedly, reputable website. Songza, in their defence, may not be fully aware of how this particular part of Facebook is being used. These websites are designed and run by professional webmasters who simply follow instructions and, as we all do, fight for their share of visitors.

Not to get too technical here, these facepiles are all part of what is called ‘Social Plugins’. If you want to know more about all of this, here is a link to the Facebook developer’s site: Social Plugins  Songza seems to have found a loophole here since their facepile is linked initially to their Songza account, not to the user’s Facebook profile. The only way you can track down the user is to do what we did, search for the user’s name on Facebook. But wait, there’s more to this than meets the eye.

Farther down the playlist page, there is a comment section. Every comment shown on the page is from a Facebook user. Here is one:

Photo of Facebook Facepiles 5
Comments with photos. No big deal here, right? You’d be surprised.

 

Let’s click on one of the photos or names to see where we are lead:

Photo of Facebook Facepiles 6
A direct link to Katherine’s Facebook profile.

Here we go again. You can see for yourself what information we can glean from this profile. If you actually go to Songza and click on any photo in the comment section then click on various parts of the profile that comes up, you’ll most likely discover all kinds of things about the person, things that they didn’t feel were worth keeping private. In several cases we found maps which indicated where they lived, what groups they were members of, what networks they were in,  who they were following and so on. Honestly, you would be surprised and probably shocked at what bits and pieces of personal information you could glean from all of this. You’d be even more surprised to find that information that you have essentially hidden by making it available to ‘Only Me’,  is wide open to the world.

Stay tuned for the next post which examines one particular flaw in the system. This flaw reveals information about you even when you have your privacy settings set to ‘Only Me’. Believe it or not, it’s true.

Thanks for reading!

Adjust Default Privacy Settings, Facebook, Facebook Ad Privacy Settings, Privacy

Welcome to Your Facebook Interview!

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Hi! Glad you could make it. Hey, before we begin, give me your real name and email address. Yes, it has to be a real email address and, yes, you must give us your real name. OK good, thanks. Now, tell us about yourself. Here’s what we need to know:

1. How old are you?

2. Are you male or female?

3. What is your current location? Yes, we need city, state and country.

4. For security purposes only, we need your phone number. Better give us your cell number too.

5. Where did you go to school? Try to list every school that you attended…ever.

6. Where have you worked in the past? Yes, we need a complete history.

7. Now we need a recent photo of you, your family and friends, your home…anything to make you more interesting to us. If you have a bikini photo, even better. We ask guys if they have a photo where they’re not wearing a shirt. We love that kind of thing. What was that? Yes, we will use your photos for our own promotions and we won’t tell you about it. OK? Privacy? Well…we have some privacy settings but they’re really hard to figure out and we keep changing them, almost every month. Better leave your stuff open to the public. It’s better that way.

8. What do you like? Yes, we know. There are so many things to like in the world, right? Well, we’ve broken everything up into categories. Music, video, hobbies…all laid out for you. Why do we need these? It’s simple really. We sell your information to advertisers. Once you tell us everything about yourself, we turn around and tune the ads that you see to your own demographic. Do you make any money from all of this? Certainly not! This is our company, not yours. We just use your information, we’re not about to pay you for anything. It’s a privilege to be with us, you should know that!

9. We also need some of your financial details…well, we would like them. Maybe you could give us your credit card number, simple things like that. Security? Oh yes, we have pretty good security here. What’s that? Well, we have been broken into a few times but not much was stolen. No, not much. Just a complete list of usernames and passwords, nothing major.

Photo of Facebook Logo
Look familiar!

 

We think you get the point. Share, reveal personal details, give out your personal information just like that, let complete strangers see your photos….it’s all there on Facebook. The point of this article is simply to make you think about what you’re doing. Hand all of this stuff out and let Facebook make money on it. Is that what you signed up for?

Photo of Facebook Warning
Facebook is very helpful, that’s for sure.

Sign up for Facebook and your profile photo might end up in a facepile somewhere. Anyone in the world could click on your photo and be taken directly to your Facebook profile page. Here’s an example:

Photo of Facepile
If you see something like this, click on a face and see what happens.

 

Make sure you set your privacy settings accordingly to avoid being seen on a website. You have no control over where Facebook posts things like this but you can control whether they can use your photo or not.

We’re simply trying to make you think. Be smart, learn all you can about Facebook privacy before you reveal too much of yourself to strangers.

Photo of Time Cover
This man is a billionaire because of your information.

 

Thanks for reading! Let us know if you have problems with anything on Facebook. We’ll try to help.

Adjust Default Privacy Settings, Controlled sharing, Facebook, Facebook Ad Privacy Settings, Facebook Games, Facebook Secrets, Facebook Tricks

Facebook Games and Apps – something to think about

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As we all know, Facebook plays pretty fast and loose with your personal information. How fast and loose? Take a look that this notice that popped up when we were removing Farmville from one of our Facebook accounts:

Photo of Facebook Games 1
What? Farmville may still have our data???

Once Facebook has shared your data with Farmville why do you have to go to Farmville to get them to delete it? Wouldn’t deleting Farmville from your Facebook account be sufficient? Looks like it’s not. You have to scramble around to ask a game to delete your own data. All the more reason to use a dummy profile to play games.

If you’re tired of worrying about Facebook sharing your data as you travel around the Internet, try this. Go to your privacy page, top right of any page and click on the down arrow and choose Privacy Settings. Once you’re there, look for Apps and Websites. Click on Edit Settings. Here’s the page that comes up:

Photo of Facebook Games 2
This is where you can change your game privacy settings.

Right now, this user has allowed 28 games or applications, including websites, access to their personal information. In the last few days, 5 apps/games have accessed that information. (We’ll show you how to limit some of this access in a later post.)

What if all of this third party sharing is not for you? From the looks of this page, Facebook is sharing everything about you with everyone. Lets change that. In the middle of this page, look for this:

Photo of Facebook Games 3
The highlighted words ‘Turn off” will stop the sharing.

 

If you click on the words ‘Turn off’, none of your personal information will be shared with apps or games or websites outside of Facebook. The upside is that your data is substantially more private, the downside is that you won’t be able to play games or interact with websites the way you did before. Depending on who you are, this could be a good thing. Here’s what you see when you click on those words:

Photo of Facebook Games 4
The warning is self-explanatory.

 

One click and you’re done. None of your games will show up on your Facebook page, your notices won’t include game updates or requests and you won’t be hounded to ‘Sign in with Facebook’ when you travel around the Internet. If you don’t like this, head back to the same page and ‘Turn on’ what you just turned off. Or, you could just play a game. Read the next tip.

TIP: Even though you have turned off Apps, Plugins and Websites and received the dire warning posted above, Facebook does not warn you that your privacy is being invaded the next time you play a game. Read that again, we’ll wait. 

Facebook is eager to warn you when you turn off Apps, Plugins and Websites, right? It’s curious that there is no warning when you turn this on, isn’t it? All you have to do is play a game, even a game that you had been playing before you turned this off, and everything is back to normal. Your personal data is being shared outside of Facebook all over again.

Facebook is full of tricks and missteps, isn’t it? It’s like walking in a minefield blindfolded sometimes. We strongly suggest a secondary, anonymous account when playing games and ‘liking’ web pages. You never know when something you’ve done on Facebook will come back to haunt you later on. Use one account for friends and another for everything else. Using two browsers on a modern fast computer is simple and saves time logging in. Keep your main account on Chrome and your play account in Explorer, example.

Next time, we’ll tell you how to adjust your app and game settings to protect at least some of your privacy. Stay tuned!

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