We’ve written many posts that help you hide different parts of your Facebook persona. This post will help you hide things outside of Facebook, those things that you don’t even know you are sharing.
Facebook makes its money by selling information about you to other websites. Basically, they sell your likes and dislikes in order for companies to better target their approach to get you to spend money. These pieces of information include the websites you visit, your email address, what ads you click on, etc. Facebook also tracks your activity as you travel around the Internet. How much money does Facebook make off of all of this? Well, one of our Facebook accounts generated just under $1,000 a year for Facebook. Multiply that by a few million Facebook users and you can see why Facebook is so interested in everything you do online.
A new app is available that helps you hide yourself from Facebook’s prying eyes. PrivacyFix, available here: https://privacyfix.com/start works inside either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. Go to the site, allow PrivacyFix to access your Facebook data and you’ll soon be invisible, at least as far as Facebook’s web customers are concerned.
Click on the “Run PrivacyFix Setup” button. Follow the prompts.
Once you run the setup, PrivacyFix helps you close the gaps in your Facebook privacy settings. Quite honestly, we thought our settings were fairly secure but found out that we were wrong. Read the prompts carefully and let PrivacyFix repair everything for you.
The only part that we found didn’t work well was when we were trying to email companies who had our information, asking them to delete any details that they have. PrivacyFix uses the old-fashioned ‘mailto’ link for this. That only works if you have an email client, let’s say Windows Live Mail (new) or Outlook Express (old), set up and ready to send out emails. Most of use webmail such as Gmail or Yahoo or Hotmail. This particular step did not work at all and we’re curious why they used this old-style script. We’ll investigate and update this when we find the answer.
Using PrivacyFix, our value to Facebook has gone down from just under $1000 to just under $10. For a few minutes work, we think that’s pretty good. Let us know how you’re worth, both before and after.
Facebook will send you an email today, November 22, 2012. Here’s what the email looks like, just in case you think it’s not really from Facebook:
This is the real thing, an email from Facebook.
There is a link inside the email, here it is: https://www.facebook.com/fbsitegovernance The link leads to a Facebook page titled : Facebook Site Governance. Even though the email only went out today, 2.4 million Facebook users have ‘liked’ the page. Go figure.
The information that Facebook wants you to read is on the Documents box or ‘tab’, as they call it. Here’s a shot of it:
Click on the Documents box to read the new rules.
Read the next page carefully. It outlines the changes and contains some interesting wording. Here’s something that we have mentioned before but you should take note of it now: “Reminders about what’s visible to other people on Facebook. For instance, when you hide things from your timeline, those posts are visible elsewhere, like in news feed, on other people’s timelines, or in search results.” Even though we try to help you hide things on Facebook, even Facebook tells you that those things may be visible elsewhere. You’be been warned.
The links to the changes are down at the bottom. If you want to read about the changes now, click on the top link in each group of two links. The ‘Redline’ link leads to a page which allows you to download the ‘redlined’ version of the changes. Basically, this is a .pdf file that shows each change from the last site governance. The changes are in red. Here’s what they look like:
See what ‘redline’ means?
Read the redlined pages carefully. Make sure you know what Facebook is doing with your data and what they are sharing with their advertisers (basically Google).
Two things bother us about this email. With all of the fake Facebook emails that we get almost every day, why would Facebook not use your Facebook name at the top of this message? PayPal uses your name when they send you an email, just so you know it’s from them, right? There are plenty of fake PayPal emails but when a company uses your name in a message, you can be pretty sure that it’s what it says it is. Secondly, most Americans are on holiday today and will be for the next few days. It’s Thanksgiving in the United States. If this message from Facebook was so vitally important, why would they send it out on the very day that most of its recipients will be doing something else? Call us sceptics but we think that Facebook doesn’t really want its user to actually read about these changes. What do you think?
While we like Facebook, we don’t trust Facebook. We think the company is irresponsible and totally lacking any kind of moral responsibility to it’s millions of users. Facebook is a business, plain and simple, only interested in money, not the safety and privacy of the people who use it. Remember that. Have fun with Facebook but don’t share things that you wouldn’t share with a complete stranger.
We’ve been writing about hiding Facebook likes for a long time. Our guides in past posts involve adjusting your privacy settings and can be quite complicated sometimes. In this post, we’re going to show you how to hide your Facebook Page likes with one single click. It works, beautifully!
TIP: We have always advocated starting another Facebook profile as the ultimate way to hide your page likes on Facebook. While this works well, it’s a pain to have to sign out of one account to then sign in to another. With the system we’re describing in this post, it takes just one mouse click to switch from your main Facebook profile page to your new ‘Facebook Page’.
1. Refer to our previous post to get the basics on starting a Facebook Page. A Facebook Page is usually started by a business or an entertainer, maybe a product or a cause, things like that. If you have liked a music star’s page before, then you know what a Facebook Page is. The cool part is that anyone can start a Facebook page. You don’t have to be a rock star.
2. There should be a link on the lower left side of your non-timeline Facebook page with the words Create a page. Click that to get to the next stage in this or look for the words Like Pages in the same location, bottom left. When you click on Like Pages, this page will come up which has a direct link to the Create a Page section. Here is what that looks like:
Click on the green button to create a page.
Alternatively, here is the link: https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php Make sure you get to the page from your regular Facebook profile page. That way, your new page is linked to your Facebook profile. Switching between the two types of Facebook profiles is far simpler if it they are linked. More on that later.
3. To simplify things, it’s best to choose the Artist, Band or Public Figure when you’re choosing the type of page you want. Here’s what your faced with:
Choosing the bottom left box means you only provide a minimum of information.
4. Next, choose the type of entertainer you are, we chose artist, make up a name and agree to Facebook’s terms. Like this:
Any name works fine. No one will ever see it anyway.
5. Skip your way through the next section. You’re not interested in spreading the word about your new page, right?
Skip all of these things.
6. Next, Facebook suggests that you like your own page. Why not? Click Like and get it over with.
Like your page and move on.
7. Click your way through the next few prompts. Facebook wants you to advertise your page but, of course, you don’t want that. Once you’re past the pop-up menus and are back to your main page, look for the blue ‘admin settings’. Here is your target:
Click on ‘admin setting’.
8. Once you get to the next page, look at the top for the words ‘Page Visibility’. Check the box that says ‘Unpublish page (only admins can see this page). This is it:
Unpublish the page you just created. That way, only you can see it.
Facebook will prompt you to publish your page but ignore them. This is your very own private page.
9. Although you have created your new Facebook Page, you aren’t actually in it yet. You should still be in your old Facebook profile account. Click the word Facebook up on the top left to confirm that. Your name is up on the top left, correct? Up on the top right, click the little down arrow to the right of Home. This menu will appear:
Once the menu pops down, click on the page you just created.
10. Once you click on your own Facebook Page name, you are taken to that page and this menu pops up:
Here is proof that you are not in Kansas anymore! You’re on another Facebook Page with the click of your mouse.
(We named our page Ralph Bunch for no other reason than this is the name that came to mind.)
11. At this point, you can either take the tour or simply start to like all of the pages that you wanted to hide on your main Facebook Profile. No one can access the page except you, therefore no one will be able to see any page that you like. You cannot add friends to this page, remember that. But you are still able to like photos that the other pages post, comment, you can even post things on their wall. The curious part of all of this is that whatever you do is pretty much hidden. Since no one can see your Facebook Page except you, anything you like or comments that you make are hidden. It’s as if you don’t exist.
12. When you want to go back to your main Facebook page, click up on the top right again and choose your own name:
Click on your name and you’re back to your normal Facebook profile.
That’s it, easy and quick. No need to worry about anyone seeing any of the pages you like, they’re completely hidden. As long as you make sure that no one can access your account, say on a shared computer, you’ll be fine. If you want to add friends, you do have to start a whole new Facebook profile but for simply liking pages, this system works perfectly.
There are several ways to hide your page likes from showing up in your Facebook news feed or on your timeline. We’ve shown you how to hide individual likes in previous posts. This time, we want to show you how to hide groups of things from your timeline.
All of this is done from your own Facebook timeline so head there now. Depending on your settings, you’ll probably see big boxes with titles such as Activity, Friends, Photos, Likes, etc. These big boxes match up with the little boxes with the same names, the ones just below and to the right of your name.
First, lets figure out what boxes we want to share with our friends. Click the small down arrow just to the right of the number of boxes you have in that section. This person has six. This is the box we are looking for:
Click the little box with the number in it. You can’t edit your Favorite boxes until you do.
Once you click on that box, you can edit and shift the various boxes around. Each main box on the second row has an editable icon on the top right, just hover your cursor there. Two boxes do not have edit icons: Friends and Photos. You can hide your full friend list elsewhere but clicking this box will show either your full friend list or mutual friends that you have with whoever is looking at your timeline. Your photo box can’t be hidden or changed but you can, of course, limit your audience to any photo that you post yourself. Any of the other boxes can be swapped with anything else or you can remove that box from your Favorites. (All of these boxes are named Favorites.) Here is a menu of what you can do with the boxes:
Arrange your boxes or remove a box completely. You can add it back later.
If you have removed a box from your Favorite boxes, you can add it back. Hover your cursor on the top right of any blank box on the top row and choose which box you want to add back. Here is the menu you see when you click the edit icon:
Pick a box name and add it back.
Just for fun, here is a glitch that we discovered in this section of the timeline. It looks like a menu where you can type in your own name but, unfortunately, it doesn’t work. This is what we saw:
It would be nice to make up your own name for a Favorite box, wouldn’t it?
Move down the page and find the post that shows that you’ve recently added a friend. Click on the edit button on the top right of that box and you’ll get to hide that whole activity, not just the one single post.
Hide all friending activity with the click of a mouse.
Facebook apps love to post every damn thing you do when you’re playing games. You can hide all posts by any game but, unfortunately, you have to do this game by game. Here’s one of the game menus which allows you to stop them from cluttering your timeline:
Remove all actions. Sounds good, doesn’t it?
Work your way down your own timeline and see what you can hide and what you can’t. Each time you do this sort of exercise, you will become more comfortable with maintaining your privacy on Facebook. By nature, Facebook is all about sharing but we think that you should be in control of what you share. We’ll help you all we can to figure it out.
Thanks for reading! Comments, questions, problems are all welcome. Follow us on Facebook to get the latest updates. Here the link: Computers Made Simple
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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:
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!
a little bit of hi-tech, a little bit of common sense and a lot of fun
