Did you know that there are at least three different versions or looks for Facebook right now? As of today, June 4, 2013, we’ve identified three completely different looks for your Facebook pages. Here’s how you can sort them out to see which one you have. If you are stuck on an older version, don’t worry too much. Sign up to be on the waiting list and Facebook will let you in as soon as they can. Here’s the link to get on the list: Facebook Newsfeed.
1. The oldest look that we have at this point is this one:
The only real difference is the search bar up at the very top.
The ‘new’ Timeline is there but the enhanced search bar isn’t. This should be the oldest Facebook page there is. It’s at least a full year old by now. As you can see, the ‘View As’ icon is only visible from your Timeline under the gear icon. It’s the same in all the versions of Facebook that we have right now.
2. The next newest is this one:
This is much the same as the old one but it has the newer graphic search function.
This newer look is the one that introduced the Facebook Graphic Search bar. As soon as you get this look, Facebook will give you a rundown on how to use it. Honestly? We never use it but, at least to Facebook, it seemed like a great idea at the time. Again, the ‘View As’ icon is in the same spot.
3. The latest and greatest Facebook look is this one:
Graph Search, left sidebar, bigger photos…it’s all here.
In this look, although you can’t see it here, the photos are much bigger and the left panel has the list of clickable icons with chat at the bottom. The ads are now below the dates of your timeline and your profile pic is up on the top left, not the top right. You can Post from any page you’re on, just click the Post icon up on the right, and the number of items in your newsfeed is right there beside the word Home. These are just normal feed items, maybe photos or shares, they are not your own notifications.
What’s missing in the latest version? The news ticker. Well, it’s still there but our version only shows one single news item at the very bottom of the chat row. Turn the chat off and there is still only one item there. Keep in mind that very few people, it seems, have this version and that it’s still in a beta stage. Things will change when this version is introduced on a more universal basis.
TIP: We’ve highlighted the ‘View As’ function because it’s a good way to see what others can see on your timeline. You can view your own profile as a stranger (default) or as a friend, just type in the name. Keep in mind that it’s not without its problems. What you see may or may not be what the public or what a friend sees. There are glitches and, as Facebook itself will tell you, “Things you hide from your timeline still appear in news feed, search and other places on Facebook”. That’s about as vague as you can get, right? Seems like you can’t hide anything.
Thanks for reading! Which version do you have? What’s missing that you think should be there or what causes you the most frustration? Let us know. We love comments!
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:
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:
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.
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!
We’ve had some inquiries about Facebook’s new look and some people seem pretty eager to get it for their profile. We can’t help too much with that but here is a link that just might speed things up:
Photos do look better, just a bit smaller than full size.
The button is way down at the bottom but there is another one on top, if you’re signed into your Facebook account:
Click the green button and get on the list.
This is what you get:
Luck you! You’re on the list.
Here’s the interesting message at the end:
Will the new look be on your mobile device first?
This says that you’re joining the waiting list for the web, right? Then it says to look for it on mobile phones soon. Maybe it will appear first for most people on their phones. We’ll have to wait and see what happens. Good luck! We hope everyone gets the new look soon.
Warning: This post is NOT a guide to stalking. It’s a warning to everyone who doesn’t take the time to adjust their privacy settings. Facebook and Google +, thanks to their interest in making a buck for their shareholders, don’t care about your privacy. The more you reveal, the more they know. Both can adjust their ads specifically to your particular demographic, your pattern if you will, hoping you will buy something from one of those ads. If you click on something, they know about it and they remember it. As you travel around the Internet with your accounts open, they will know everywhere you go and, to a certain extent, everything you do. You’ve been warned.
Here is a step by step, do-it-yourself, stalking manual.
1. Pick a magazine, any magazine. Better yet, pick a magazine that appeals to the type of person you are looking for. Here are a couple of examples, straight from the Internet:
This is from Google + but the idea is the same.
In the above example from Seventeen Magazine, hovering over the Google + icon brings up the ‘Follow’ button. Clicking on any profile photo brings up their Google + profile. Believe it or not, and this is the scary part, Google + seems worse than Facebook on this issue because we do not have a Google + account yet we were still able to view the profiles. It gets worse. On one of the profiles we clicked on, we were able to see two important maps. One was of the school that the person attended, the other was a map to their home, complete with street name and number, believe it or not.
Here’s another:
This is a Facebook facepile.
We weren’t able to find a facepile on a North American magazine site in time for this post but a magazine from Singapore had one. If you hover your mouse over a photo, the person’s name pops up. If you click on any profile photo, you are taken to that person’s Facebook page. Depending on your privacy settings, a complete stranger, even one who does not have a Facebook account, can see everything that you haven’t bothered to hide. Here is an example of someone who didn’t hide very much at all. (We were able to see this without being logged into Facebook):
It’s all there, isn’t it?
Her school, her city, lots of photos…it’s all here. Remember, this information is available to anyone,whether they have a Facebook account or not, simply by clicking on a tiny profile photo. Here’s what we think a stranger should see when they click on a link in a facepile:
Still some information but not much.
In the example above, we can see this person’s school but not much else, other than her name. We are not signed into Facebook, by the way. This person’s profile photo is good, too. It does not reveal too much about the person. Think about your profile photo. What does it show about you? What information are you revealing to the public?
We don’t use Google + (we are in the process of figuring it out) so we can’t advise you on your privacy settings yet. With Facebook, remember that you can hide everything except your profile photo, your timeline covers and any mutual friends you have with the person who is viewing your profile, provided that you have any and that the person is signed into Facebook. There is no need to make any information public, it’s not a requirement. Choose your own level of privacy, one that you feel is secure and, most important, make sure your young friends and relatives have their privacy set to reveal the absolute minimum.
We hope this post has made you think about what information you are putting out for the world to see. What information are your children sharing with the world? What about your friends who are less comfortable with computers and/or social networking? Maybe you can refer them to us or, better yet, help them lock down their privacy using our guides.
Thanks for reading!
a little bit of hi-tech, a little bit of common sense and a lot of fun
