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
Here’s a short post on getting your Facebook Likes back. We’ll show you how to sort out the different sections that appear when someone checks out your profile.
1. Head to your own Timeline and look for the words ‘Update Info’.
Click on Update Info.
2. Once you click Update Info, look over on the right for the icon of a pencil.
The word Edit appears when you hover over the icon. Click it.
3. Even if you don’t want to edit anything, click the icon and you’ll get this menu. Click ‘Edit Sections’ when you see it:
Click Edit Sections.
4. Up pops a list of all of the sections that you can choose to show or hide. Notice that three sections can’t be hidden: About, Photos and Friends are all permanent. You can, however, hide parts of these sections as we’ve told you before. You can hide your full Friend list, for instance, but you cannot hide any mutual friends that you might have with someone who sees your profile.
Pick the ones you want to show or hide.
5. Finally, don’t forget to click Save to make your changes take effect.
Click Save and you’re done.
That’s it. Your list will vary from ours, of course. The main sections will be the same but you won’t have Spotify, probably, but you might have ones that are not on our list.
Our last post detailed how to hide or unhide your Facebook Likes ‘box’. Here’s that post: Part One of the Ultimate Facebook Likes Guide In that post, we showed you how to control the privacy of each like. Since that part is a bit confusing, here’s a guide to the whole ‘Like’ section.
Before we begin, some explanation is required. The ‘likes’ we are talking about here are those that pertain to your interests, things such as Music, Television, Books, etc. None of this applies to photos or comments that you click ‘like’ on. As you know, those ‘likes’ are controlled by the owner’s privacy settings, not yours. Are we clear on that? If you like Ally’s photo, only Ally controls who sees either the photo or the fact that you like it. The only way to hide your ‘like’ is to ‘unlike’ it. Same goes for your comments, your liking a comment, etc. You control things that you post. You do not control anything that you do not post.
Second point: Some things, such as Music and Film, can only be hidden or shown as a group. If you like the Beatles and want to show everyone that you do, you can show them ALL of the music you like. If you like the Backstreet Boys and DO NOT want anyone to know that, you have to hide ALL of the music that you like. If you’ve got your main section settings set to ‘Friends’ or ‘Public’, and you happen to add Britney Spears to your Music likes, everyone will know. The ONLY way you can hide it is to remove poor old Britney from your list or hide the whole section.
Let’s get started. From your Timeline, click on Update Info. The rest of this post flows down from the top to the bottom of the page that comes up next after you click Update Info.
Hide everything by clicking the Edit icon and selecting Hide Section.
Working down from the top, let’s see what you can hide and what you can’t.
1.About – You can hide different parts of your information. Click the Edit icon in each section to see what you can hide.
2. TV programmes – It’s all or one for this. Show everything or hide everything.
3. Books – All or none.
4. Films – All or none
5. Music – All or none.
6. Music – All or none.
7. Friends – Show all or hide all EXCEPT for mutual friends. If you have a mutual friend with someone, you can’t hide that.
8. Photos – You have complete control of all of your photos EXCEPT your Timeline cover photos. Please remember that you can’t hide your cover photos. We said that twice simply to emphasize it. If you have a questionable cover photo, everyone who sees your Facebook profile, even if they are not friends of yours, can see it.
9. Games (Recent Games, actually) – All or none.
10. Places – All or none.
That’s it for the sections of your ‘likes’ or your favorites. (Maybe everyone should start to use the term favorites instead of likes. It gets confusing otherwise, right? Read on….)
OK, now we are into the last section of these favorites. Conveniently, Facebook has named them Likes! The final section is divided up into these categories:
Other Likes, Inspirational People, Sports, Sports Teams, Athletes, Games, Activities and Interests.
In previous posts, we’ve used the term ‘page likes’ for these items. Until recently, you could hide some of your individual likes but now it’s different. For better or worse, you only get to show or hide ALL of each category. Click on any of the topics at the top of your Likes section. Most of them would probably be under the heading ‘Other Likes’, at least they were for us. Now you don’t have to worry about hiding some but showing others. It’s easy to hide them all. Click the edit icon on the right side and choose Edit Privacy. Here’s what you see:
Choose your privacy settings here.
If a Facebook page doesn’t fall into one of the main categories, it will be placed under ‘Other Likes’. Keep that in mind. As you scan your individual likes, you’ll see a sub-heading under the name. Some may be Theatre or Travel Agency or something completely different. Weixin, for instance, is listed as an ‘Interest’ under ‘Activities’. Weixin or WeChat really isn’t an activity, it’s a bit of software. Somehow it’s shown as an interest. Go figure.
We mention this because you may decide to show your ‘like’ of Inspirational People. Well, if you look at the list of inspirational people, you may be quite surprised at who Facebook deems ‘influential’. You may be expecting Mother Theresa but Charlize Theron shows up in the suggestion box. If you’ve chosen to Like Theron and expect her to show up under ‘Other Likes’ that you’ve hidden, you’d be surprised to find out that she’s in the Inspirational People section that you’ve chosen to show. See what we mean?
TIP: Facebook uses your Likes and Interests (Favorites) to tune the ads that you see on your pages. If you like Guitars, you will see Guitar ads. It’s that simple. Choosing a certain genre of movie or a certain type of music will almost certainly put you into an age demographic that Facebook will mine for ads that you just might click on. If do, they make money. Keep that in mind when you’re blithely ‘liking’ things that you see on Facebook.
There’s more to this than meets the eye, isn’t there? In our next post we’re going to get into these likes in more detail. Now you know what you can hide and what you can’t, we’ll work on some deeper concepts next time.
It seems that Facebook changes their own rules every week. They probably don’t change every week but in the last few months, many of our previous posts on Facebook likes have been made obsolete. Here we go with our latest how-to on this topic. If you’re lost your ‘Likes’, we’ll get them back. If you want to hide them from everyone but yourself, we’ll show you how. Grab a coffee, open your own Facebook profile and let’s get started.
How to Hide (or un-Hide) Your Likes on Facebook
1. Everything you do is done from your Timeline so start there. You will notice that the various boxes (photos, friends,likes, etc.) have been replaced by the words Timeline, About, Friends, Photos and, finally, More. Clicking on More brings down a menu, as seen here:
No likes here!
2. We’ve hidden our Likes from this menu. How do we get them back? Click on the words Update Info:
Update Info is where we start.
3. On the right side of the page that comes up, click on the pen/pencil icon on the far right. When the menu pops down, choose Edit Sections:
Click Edit Sections to bring up a new menu, one we haven’t seen before.
4. Here’s the new menu:
Here’s where you choose which topics show up on your Timeline when a friend clicks the word ‘More’.
Simply decide which sections of your favorites you want to show to your friends. There are three sections that you can’t hide, About, Friends and Photos, but you can certainly hide parts of each ‘section’ listed on that list. What can’t you hide? You can’t hide your Mutual Friends from anyone. Bummer, huh? Yes, you can hide your Friend list but you can’t hide Mutual friends. Keep that in mind, folks.
5. Notice that this time we’ve selected ‘Likes’. Click Save and then go back to your Timeline and click the word More.
What’s this? The ‘Likes’ are back? Cool!
Guess what? Our Likes are shown in the drop-down list. Pat yourself on the back! You’ve completed your assignment. This has been a short and simple way to get the Likes ‘box’ back. You’re right, it’s not a box but people still use that term to describe it so we will too. Obviously, perform the opposite steps if you want to hide your list of likes. What do you see when you actually click on the word ‘Likes’ on that menu? Here’s what we see:
Here they are, broken down into groups. These groups may vary from person to person.
Now you’re asking, “Who can see what?” right? Time to hover. Move your mouse (cursor) to the right of the words under each ‘Like’. You’ll see an icon that reflects your privacy settings for each of the ‘Likes’ shown.
Click on the icon if you want to change the privacy settings for each ‘Like’.
OK folks, that’s it for today. We’ve got the Likes box back or we’ve hidden it, it’s up to you. Next, let’s take a look at some privacy settings in your Likes area.
Questions, comments, oatmeal cookies…we love them all. Let us know what you can or can’t do and we’ll see what solutions we can come up with. Follow us on Facebook (just click Like) and keep up with all of our updates, posts and interesting stuff. Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook
Thanks for reading!
a little bit of hi-tech, a little bit of common sense and a lot of fun
