Category Archives: Facebook Tricks

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

Hiding Likes on Facebook – it’s back!

31 Comments

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

Leave a comment

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.

 

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

Leave a comment

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!

Thanks for reading! Like us on Facebook and get instant notification of our posts: https://www.facebook.com/ComputersMadeSimple?ref=hl

 

Adjust Default Privacy Settings, Facebook, Facebook 101, Facebook page likes, Facebook Secrets, Facebook Tricks

Facebook Changes Its Like Privacy – get the details here.

Leave a comment

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.

Photo of Facebook Likes 1
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. 

Photo of Facebook Likes 2
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?

Photo of Facebook Likes 3
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.

Photo of Facebook Likes 4
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.

Photo of Facebook Likes 5
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.

Photo of Facebook Likes 6
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.

Photo of Facebook Likes 7
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:

Photo of Facebook Likes 8
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.

Photo of Facebook Likes 14
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:

Photo of Facebook Likes 15
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.

Photo of Facebook Likes 12
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:

Photo of Facebook Likes 13
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!