Category Archives: Facebook Secrets

Facebook, Facebook Secrets, Facebook Tricks

Stalking Friends on Facebook – a privacy glitch is revealed.

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Facebook has had many privacy glitches in the past. We’ve just discovered another one, a fairly significant privacy breach that allows a new user to stalk a friend’s friends. If you want to find out who is friends with one of your friends, even if their friend list is set to be seen by only the user, here’s what you have to do:

1. Sign out of Facebook first, of course, then open a new account. We just did this and found that if we tried to sign up using Firefox, we needed a phone number to register for Facebook. Using Explorer, we didn’t. While we don’t generally recommend using Explorer, it seems that it’s easier for this particular stealth operation.

2. Knowing that you are going to add one particular ‘friend’, try to use a name for your new profile that would seem attractive to that friend. Could be a sports star, could be a movie star, doesn’t matter. The key is to get that friend to accept you as a friend.

3. Once you have the profile set up and have confirmed the registration email, invite your friend to be friends with you. This plan gets confusing if you have more than one friend but it’s up to you how you handle it. You can always add a few friends then delete them but we’re not sure this works.

4. We all know that Facebook is all about adding people as friends, they even suggest names for you. If you are a new user, guess who they use as suggestions? Right, people from your one and only friend. Once your friend confirms you as a friend, Facebook immediately suggests that you add every single friend that this person has, even if their friend list is set to the ‘only me’ privacy lock. 

Sometimes Facebook lists the friend as a ‘mutual friend’ with the person you are already friends with, other times they simply show the friend as a suggestion. The cool or uncool thing is, every one of that group of suggestions is a friend of your real friend. You can see how this would get confusing if you add a few people at once. Right now it works perfectly.

Here’s how Facebook suggests friends:

Photo of Friend Suggestions `
To see the full list, click on See All.

In order to see the full list, click on ‘See All’ to bring up page after page of suggestions, depending on how many friends your single friend has. This is the full list:

Photo of Friend Suggestion List
Here they are, all of your friend’s friends.

 

There you have it. Another glitch in Facebook’s privacy settings, all ready to be used and abused by savvy Facebook users. We can’t believe that this simple trick works, but it does. Imagine how this Facebook exploit could be used? Next to facepiles, we see this as the second biggest threat to your privacy on Facebook. We’re outlining it here just in case Facebook hears about it and changes their policy. Who would dream that their locked down friend list could be wide open like this?

Thanks for reading! Comments and questions are welcome. Join us on Facebook by liking our page: https://www.facebook.com/ComputersMadeSimple?ref=hl

Avoid Facebook Email Scams, Facebook, Facebook Secrets, Facebook Tricks, Scams

Facebook Scams: How to spot them

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When any social media ‘comes of age’, there are certain to be scammers who want to take advantage of the people who use it. Facebook has been around for a long time, we all know that, and there are hundreds of scams out there which are set up to trick you out of information and/or your password(s). Here’s how to spot some of them:

1. The most important thing to remember is this: If it’s sounds too good to be true, it probably is. No one is offering anything for free. You can’t get a free iPhone, a free Walmart gift card or any other thing by clicking on a link on Facebook. Use your head! Has Walmart or Apple ever given anything away for free?  Don’t fall for any free gift links, any free vacation links or anything that even resembles this. Nothing is free, certainly not anything that you find on Facebook.

2. If you take a link that leads you outside of Facebook, you’re on your own. While you are in Facebook, certain secure conditions exist. If you click on a link that takes you out of Facebook, specially one that asks you for your Facebook password or your email password, close the browser window and move on.

3. If you get an email that looks like it’s from Facebook, it almost certainly isn’t. First, Facebook knows your name and would use it in any email that they might send you.  Second, your privacy settings can be set so that Facebook can only contact you via your mobile phone or another email account besides the one you log in with. If your account has been hacked, there are ways to know this. Again, use your head. Don’t randomly click on links that you get in emails.

4. There are two sites that you can use to check things out. OK, three, if you count this site.

Snopes.com is where you can check out urban legends, rumors and myths of all kinds. If you’ve seen photos of ‘sick children’ on Facebook, Snopes will tell you how long that particular scam has been around. Bookmark this site and use it to check out things that seem suspicious on Facebook.

Photo of Snopes logo.
Use Snopes to check out scams, myths and rumors.

Thatsnonsense.com (here is their Facebook page: That’sNonsense.com) is something that we discovered when we were checking out a Facebook scam.

Photo of Nonsense logo
Check out Facebook scams here.

You have to wade through many posts but there is lots of info here about all current Facebook spoofs. The latest is this one:

Quoted from a post on Facebook:

Hello, my FB friends: I want to stay PRIVATELY connected with you. I post photos of my family that I don’t want strangers to have access to!!! However, with the recent changes in FB, the “public” can now see activities in ANY wall. This happens when our friend hits “like” or “comment” ~ automatically, their friends would see our posts too. Unfortunately, we can not change this setting by ourselves …because Facebook has configured it this way. PLEASE place your mouse over my name above (DO NOT CLICK), a window will appear, now move the mouse on “FRIENDS” (also without clicking), then down to “Settings”, click here and a list will appear. REMOVE the CHECK on “COMMENTS & LIKE” and also “PHOTOS”. By doing this, my activity among my friends and family will no longer become public. Now, copy and paste this on your wall. Once I see this posted on your page I will do the same. Thanx

End of quote.

This paragraph is being spread all over Facebook. As you know, if you have followed us for a while, this doesn’t work. The only way you can limit posts and comments is to control your privacy settings NOT by adjusting a friend’s news feed. How would you know this? Most likely because your friend, unless they are a computer expert and a pretty good writer, would not be able to write something like this. Second, if you uncheck photos and comments, how would you be able to see those photos and comments anyway? The person who posts this obviously doesn’t know how to set their privacy controls. We do! Follow our posts and we’ll keep you up to date on all everything to do with Facebook, scams, spam and phishing. We try to simplify your life as much as we can.

If you have questions about something that you see on Facebook, let us know. We’ll track down the answer for you.

Thanks for reading!

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

Facebook Privacy Shortcuts

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Facebook recently introduced a new interface (the thing that you see when you check out your Timeline). You may not have noticed the new privacy shortcuts, however. Here’s a quick guide to how to use them.

1. Click on your profile photo from anywhere in Facebook to get to your Timeline. Up at the top are some new icons. Here is what they look like:

 

Photo of Facebook Privacy Shortcuts 1
Look for the gear and padlock icons.

The gear icon hasn’t changed much. It leads to your account and privacy settings. The ‘Advertise’ link is new, we’ll explain that another time, but the links are pretty much the same as before. Here they are:

Photo of Facebook Privacy Shortcuts 2
Same old, same old except for ‘Advertise’. What the heck is that? Details later.

 

2. To the left of the gear, look for the padlock icon. It’s the one that we’re dealing with today. Instead of going to a completely different Facebook page, you can adjust your settings from your Timeline. Here’s a rundown of the different menus:

Photo of Facebook Privacy Shortcuts 3
Three icons with a down arrow to the right.

Here’s where you can change ‘Who can see my stuff?’ and ‘Who can contact me’ as well as ‘How do I stop someone from bothering me?’

 

3. One by one :

Photo of Facebook Privacy Shortcuts 3
Adjust your post setting here. There are two links to other tools, your Activity Log and the View As feature.

 

4. Next we have the ‘Who can contact me?’ settings:

Photo of Facebook Privacy Shortcuts 5
This setting is quite odd, isn’t it?

If you can tell us why Facebook uses such nebulous English, we’d love to know. It seems to us that ‘Basic Filtering’ would let your friends contact you but prevent strangers from sending you messages. Instead, neither setting makes any sense. Why would you want to receive messages from some friends and not others? How can you determine who can send a message?

As for the ‘Strict Filtering’, why would you miss messages from some friends? The ‘Mostly just friends’ line seems to say that only certain friends can get through the filter. This is, bluntly, absurd.

Lastly, choose who can send you friend requests.

5. If you have blocked someone on Facebook, you’ll remember that the process was fairly difficult. With the new shortcuts, it’s substantially easier.

Photo of Facebook Privacy Shortcuts 6
Start typing a name, then click Block when you find the right person.

 

6. The See More Settings link down at the bottom leads to this page:

Photo of Facebook Privacy Shortcuts 7
These are more settings that you can adjust. We’ll do another post specifically on this page at a later date.

 

That’s enough for today. Play with the settings here to control who sees what and who can contact you, etc. Again, Facebook has made this more confusing than necessary but, at least, the controls are easier to find. Let us know if you have a problem with any of this.

Thanks for reading!

Controlled sharing, Facebook, Facebook page likes, Facebook Secrets, Facebook Tricks, Hide Likes from Timeline, Layered Privacy

Hiding Likes on Facebook – it’s back!

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We’ve written quite a few posts on hiding your likes in Facebook. After months of confusion, it seems that Facebook has reverted back to their old system of hiding or showing likes. Here’s the latest, January 2013, version of hiding your likes:

1. Go to your Timeline page by clicking on your name up on the top right. Once you’re there, look for the boxes of favorites, the ones marked Friends, Photos, etc. Here’s what you are looking for:

Photo of Likes Box
If your Likes box is on the top or bottom row, doesn’t matter. Click either the word Likes or inside the box.

 

2. If you can see your Likes box, click on it. If you can”t see your Likes box, it might be in the second row of Favorites. (There are only two rows and only eight possible boxes.)  Click on the little arrow to the right of the first row to bring the next row into view. Like this:

Photo of two rows of Favorites.
The second row is now visible, so click on the word Likes or in the box.

When you can finally see your Likes box, click on it.

 

3. Once you see the page that reads ‘Favorites’ (mine says ‘Favourites’ because we’re in Canada), look up on the top right for the word Edit and click on it.

Photo of Favourites Page
Click the word Edit.

 

4. For each section of your Favorites, there is an icon that controls who sees it. Click the icon to set the privacy level of each Favorite. Standard Favorites are Music, Books, Movies and Television, etc. but you can always add other categories.

Photo of Facebook Likes Page 4
Set the privacy level for each category here.

You cannot hide some ‘Likes’ in each category and unhide others. If you like Madonna, that will be visible to all of your friends if you choose to make your Music ‘likes’ visible. To hide the fact that you like Madonna, you have to hide all of your Music ‘Likes’.

5. Finally, as far as ‘Page Likes’ go, you can hide them all or make them all visible to whoever you want. You cannot hide some pages and make others visible. Better to hide all of your page likes, just to avoid trouble. This is the way we’ve got our’s set:

Photo of Page Likes
Even though this icon controls the pages that you like, the heading is ‘Likes’. Confusing, isn’t it?

 

Very Important Tip (please read this): If the page you like is set to a category that you haven’t hidden, the fact that you like that page will be visible to whoever your settings allow. Let us explain that further. Let’s say that Madonna has her page set to be a ‘Music’ page or a ‘Movie’ page. Even though her Facebook page looks the same as our Facebook page (Computers Made Simple), the fact that you like it will show up in your ‘Favorite: Movie” box. Keep that in mind, please.

We’re going to update all of our other ‘Facebook Like’ pages to lead to this one. As of January 2013, this page is valid, at least in North America. Facebook may have different settings, depending on which country you are in at the present time. Europe seems to have better privacy guidelines, from what we’ve seen. Bravo to Europe for making Facebook tow the line!

If you have comments, problems or suggestions for topics, let us know. Thanks for reading!

 

While you’re here, why not add our Facebook page to your Likes? Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook. 

 

Data Use Policy Update, Facebook, Facebook Games, Facebook Secrets, Facebook Tricks, Hide Game Updates

Facebook Game Privacy

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Most of us like to play some of the games on Facebook. If you read our last post, you’ll know that you don’t have a lot of privacy when you play these games. We’ve recommended using a dummy account for games but that’s up to you. If you do play games on your main or only Facebook account, here’s how you can adjust a few privacy settings.

1. Go to your Privacy Settings page (top right, click on the little down arrow and choose Privacy Settings.)

2. Look for the words ‘Ads, Apps and Websites’ about 3/4s of the way down the page then click ‘Edit settings’ on the right side.

3. You should be at a page that looks like this:

Photo of Facebook Game Settings 1
Here is where we’ll spend some time.

 

4. Read the top part of this page. You’ll see why we suggest a dummy account for games. Here is the important part:

“On Facebook, your name, profile picture, gender, networks, username and user id (account number) are always publicly available, including to apps (Learn why). Also, by default, apps have access to your friends list and any information you choose to make public.”

Note that your friend list is available to applications and games, even if it is marked ‘only me’ in your custom privacy settings. We’re not sure why a game has to know who your friends are but, hey, that’s Facebook!

5. In the middle of the page you’ll see a short list of apps that you are using. Not all are shown at once so click the words ‘Edit settings’. The next page that comes up will have a complete list of apps that you have allowed to ‘interact with your Facebook account’. In other words, these are the apps that Facebook has shared your most intimate details with. There certainly are a lot of them, aren’t there? Every web page, every game, every little widget that you’ve added to your Facebook account is there.

6. On the right side of every app, there is the word ‘Edit’. Click that and let’s see what you’re sharing with your friends. This is what Social Wars can see on one of our accounts:

Photo of Facebook Games
We think you should match your settings to these.

 

7. Every app that you use must be able to access your basic information. This one, Social Wars, says that it has to be able to access your email, too. Not every app requires that but this one does. However, does this Facebook user get emails from Social Wars? No. See down at the bottom where it says ‘When to notify you?’ We’ve set that to ‘Never’.

8. Why cover your Timeline with posts from games? You don’t have to.  There will always be some game posts when you look at your own Timeline but you can hide all of these from your friends. Second up from the bottom is the line ‘Posts on your behalf’. Well thanks, Social Wars, but we don’t want you to post crap on our Timeline. Therefore we’ve set that to ‘Only Me’. Only this Facebook user will see Social War’s posts, no one else.

9. We suggest that you work your way down the complete list of apps and change your settings to match ours. You can, of course, adjust each app to your own level of privacy. It takes time but we think it’s worth it.

TIP: Every time you add a game or an app, you’ll have to change these settings for it, right? Remember that.

10. Lastly, on the far right of each app or game you’ll see a little X. That is how you delete the game or app entirely. If you haven’t used something for a while, get rid of it. Some of these apps are temporary, for contests and so on. There is no reason to give them continued access to your private data, is there?

TIP: Even though you have deleted a game or an app, guess what? They still have all of your data. Look at this warning from Facebook regarding a game, Farmville:

Photo of Facebook Games 3
Oh no! Farmville (and other games) still have your personal data!

See why we suggest a dummy account for games? Does it makes sense now?

Thanks for reading! Questions and comments are always welcome.