Category Archives: Facebook

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

Facebook Privacy Shortcuts

Leave a comment

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!

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, Data Use Policy Update, Facebook, Fotobounce

Protect Facebook Photos from Bulk Downloaders

Leave a comment

We’ve written about Fotobounce before, here and here . Fotobounce allows you to download full photo albums from  friends or pages that you like on Facebook. Yesterday, we got involved in a discussion about precisely this activity. Some of our artist or photographer friends objected to friends and/or complete strangers downloading their photos and using them on other social media sites. While we agreed that there is a case to be made here, we pointed out that simply putting something on Facebook is telling the world that it’s OK to copy/share/use etc. Anyway, that’s not the point today. In this post, we’ll teach you how to defeat Fotobounce from stealing your photos. (Stealing is a strong word but it kind of fits here.)

Deep inside Facebook’s privacy page, in an area that you probably wouldn’t get to on your own, there is a section that will allow you to prevent Fotobounce from downloading your photo albums. Here’s how to do it:

1. On the top right of any Facebook page, click on the down arrow like this:

Photo of Block Fotobounce 1
Click on Privacy Settings

2. Once you get to the Privacy Settings page, look for the section that says ‘Ads, Apps and Websites’. Click on ‘Edit Settings’.

Photo of Block Fotobounce 2
Click on Edit Settings

 

3. When the next page pops up, look for the section that says ‘How people bring your info to apps they use’.

Photo of Block Fotobounce 3
Click on Edit Settings

 

4. Finally, you’re at the page we want. This is how it probably looks the first time you see it:

Photo of Block Fotobounce 4
Most things are checked on this page. This isn’t good.

What you see here are the controls for what parts of your information Facebook apps can use. This is completely separate from what your friends can see or what strangers can see. We’ve already covered hiding things from your friends in many previous posts. Right now, we want to stop any Facebook apps from using your personal information including your photo albums. 

5. You’ll have to take our word for it but ignore the last line: “But, remember, you will not be able to use any games or apps yourself.” That line is total baloney. 

TIP: Despite what Facebook and games such as Farmville tell you, games and apps do not need access to anything other than your Basic Information. Check the photo below. Basic Information is not something that can be hidden anyway.  If you uncheck everything on that page, you will still be able to play games as usual. Please note that you can also limit what parts of your Basic Information that anyone can see. More on that in a future post. 

6. Here is how one of our accounts looks after we fixed our app settings:

Photo of Block Fotobounce 5
Nothing is checked and we can still play games. Looks like Facebook lied.

 

7. You see above that nothing is checked. Apps cannot see anything about this profile. Neither can websites or, supposedly, games. At least that’s what Facebook tells you. More on that in a future post. The good news is that Fotobounce will not be able to access your photos at all. Not only will they not be able to download them, your photos are not even visible in Fotobounce.

We advise you to take these steps immediately to protect your personal data from being spread across websites and Facebook apps and games. Once everything is unchecked, your own Facebook experience won’t change. You won’t notice any difference. Then again, you won’t be shocked when your face shows up on a website or game somewhere, either. That, we think, is worth the few minutes that this process takes.

Thanks for reading! Stay in touch on Facebook, too. Here’s the Computers Made Simple Facebook page link: https://www.facebook.com/ComputersMadeSimple?ref=hl