Category Archives: Facebook

Facebook, Facebook 101, Facebook Secrets, Facebook Tricks, Hide Likes from Timeline, Timeline

Facebook Privacy Check

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We’ve been writing about Facebook privacy for quite a while now. There seem to be an incredible array of privacy settings, right? If you’d like to do your own experiments, and we suggest that you should, here’s what to do: Set up a second Facebook profile.

1. Instead of logging into Facebook, apply for a new account. Fill in your details on the page that comes up when you log out of your current account or simply go to Facebook.com in another browser. You could use your real identity, such as your second name and the same last name, or a fake one, it won’t matter to Facebook, even though their terms say you have to be a ‘real person’. You must use a real email address but that’s easy, sign up for a new hotmail or gmail account and you’re off.

2. Add yourself as a friend. That’s your first step. Forget about photos or personal details for now. Add your other account as a friend (in a separate browser), and get to work. Keeping both profiles open in separate browsers will show you instantly how changing the settings on your new profile affects what updates you send out to your other, original profile.

3. On the new account, go around liking things, posting crazy pics with different privacy settings and so on. On your normal account, check to see what is shown from your alter ego’s activities. What you’re looking for, obviously, is how you can hide what your fake account does from your real account. If your fake account can hide things, then your real account can hide things as well.

4. Make a note of anything you do. We find ourselves lost in the thick of Facebook privacy pages sometimes and, quite frankly, we forget how we got there. Part of this is deliberate. We have to describe how to get to a certain page to our readers so it has to be kind of second nature to us. Getting lost lets us experiment with our reader’s experience. If we explain something and we get lost, then sure as shootin’ our readers will too.

5. You can use the second account to subscribe to pages and websites that you wouldn’t normally subscribe to, knowing that your privacy is guaranteed. For some of you who have very eclectic tastes, this might be the answer to the whole Facebook privacy problem. Instead of trying to decipher Facebook’s arcane privacy settings, simply start a new account and get on with exploring the alternate lifestyle you want to hide from your family and/or your friends.

6. Another benefit of a new account comes with the different Facebook games you play. If you need shots of energy in Mafia Wars, send them from your new account. There are quite a few games that require neighbors in order to advance. Adding yourself as a neighbor opens up more doors in games such as Farmville or Hidden Chronicles.

Adding a new Facebook account and experimenting with it is simple, free and probably takes a lot less time than trying to remember which setting is which, at least as far as privacy is concerned. It also takes less time than reading posts such as we have here on Computers Made Simple but we hope you still come back to visit us now and then.

Thanks for reading!

Facebook, Facebook 101, Facebook Tricks, Hide Likes from Timeline, Privacy, Timeline

Hiding Things on Facebook

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There are things you can hide on Facebook and things you can’t. Let’s start with the short list.

Things you can’t hide on Facebook

Comments and likes on anything that you haven’t posted. If you comment or like someone’s photo, you can’t hide it, you can only delete the comment or ‘unlike’ the photo. Same thing for a status update, a note or a page that you’ve liked. You can hide the fact that you like the page but you can’t hide your comments. Therefore:

Facebook Rule Number One: If you don’t want someone to see a like or a comment, don’t comment on or like a photo, status or comment that wasn’t posted by you.

 

Things you can hide on Facebook

You can hide virtually everything else, except what you see above. Feel free to subscribe, click like on fan pages, post photos and notes (making sure you set your privacy rules accordingly). If there are some subscriptions or fan pages that you want to hide, you can do that. We’ll show you how.

For everything you post on Facebook, there is an icon just to the right which allows you to set the rules for who can see the post. The only one that needs explanation is the Custom choice. If you click that, you can hide the post from some of your friends. Just start typing their name in the slot and select them one by one.

Here are some tips on how to hide your page likes and subscriptions:

1. Click on your profile photo on the top right to get to your timeline,

2. Click on the words Update Info.

3. Here’s what you’ll see:

The first page for updating your information.
Select the things you want to update using the drop down menu on the upper left.

4. The items in the drop down menu might be different than the ones you see here. On one of our accounts, we’ve lost the ‘likes’ completely. The one you are looking for here is probably ‘subscriptions’ or ‘likes’. Clicking on Likes brings up a page which lists all of your likes. Move your mouse over to the top right until the word Edit appears, like this:

Mouseover shown to edit "likes"
The edit button is a mouseover, it only appears when the mouse hovers over the spot where it is.

5. Click on the word Edit when it appears and this page will show up next:

List of Editable Likes
Use the icons on the right to hide your different likes.

6.  As you can see, the top list of Favorites are locked, only available to the owner of the profile. The rest are open to friends only. The current page is for your ‘favorites’, the general interest things such as movies and TV and so on. Scroll down this page to get to your actual Facebook page likes and your website/web page likes to see this:

Lower half of Facebook Likes page.
Scroll down the page to see this selection, subs will vary, of course.

7. This is where your selection of page likes will show up. Here you will see the Facebook pages you have clicked like on plus all of the websites or web pages that you’ve also liked. As you can see in the example above, all of this person’s like are locked, only the owner can see them. Any page this person clicks like on will be hidden from everyone. Remember that.

Tip: Before you go around clicking like on questionable pages, click like on a generic page. Once you’ve done that, head over to the page above and hide that like from everyone, or just from some/one of your friends. Anything you like after that will be hidden, according to your current settings.

Finally, here is the key to hiding what pages you like, whether they be Facebook pages or web sites or pages beyond Facebook:

Use this menu to select who can see your likes on Facebook.
Use this menu to select who can see your likes on Facebook.

It is that little menu at the top. Use it wisely and you’ll be able to safely click like on anything BUT posts or shares by other people.
Facebook is fun but sometimes you like to keep some of your activities hidden from your friends. We hope this little guide helps you out.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Facebook, Facebook 101, Facebook Ad Privacy Settings, Facebook Secrets, Facebook Tricks, facepiles

Facebook 101 – Part 8 – The Hidden Dangers of Facepiles

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Here are three images from Facebook facepiles, those ubiquitous groups of faces seen on an alarming number of websites:

1. This is from Seventeen Magazine.

A facepile from Seventeen Magazine
Recognize anyone? No? Neither do we.

2. This is from Girl’s Life magazine.

A facepile from the Girl's Life site
Only five but, again, these are strangers...young strangers.

3. This is from Stickam.com, a very popular teen webcam chat site.

A facepile from Stickam.com
Ten complete strangers, including one from the States. Oh, she is 17.

These Facebook facepiles are from three popular teen websites. All three show Facebook profiles of Facebook users who have clicked the ‘like’  button on the respective company’s site. Facebook tells us that this social plugin will only show the profiles of friends of the user who views the facepile. In these three cases, and many more that we’ve discovered, this is not the case. The profile photos, complete with clickable links to the user’s Facebook profile page, are all complete strangers and, in almost every case, are profiles of teen users. Some of the profiles shown are those of very young users, we should add.

Do you see a problem with this? We do. There is no harm in a facepile of your friends on a website where you and many of your friends have clicked ‘like’. There is harm in going to a website where you can easily click on someone’s profile photo and get instant access to their Facebook profile. There is even more harm if that profile belongs to a teen Facebook user, wouldn’t you agree?

Here’s what Facebook has to say about this: https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=ads

The key lines are these:

“You may see social context on third party sites, including in adverts, through Facebook social plugins. Although social plugins enable you to have a social experience on a third party site, Facebook does not share your information with the third party sites hosting the social plugins. Learn more about social plugins.”

The social plugins query leads you to this page: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/

There is nothing on that page about strangers having access to your Facebook profile. If you click the word ‘facepile’ on the left side of that page, you are taken to this page:

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/facepile/  which describes the implementation of the facepile but, again, there is no mention of the faces being clickable to either friends or strangers.

What we have here is an incomplete, and dangerous, flaw in the Facebook system. In the rush to monetize user profiles, Facebook has opened the doors to abuse of its own system. Facebook isn’t a dating site. It’s for friends, people who really know each other. Why then is it possible to click your way to profiles of complete strangers? Why is it possible for complete strangers to click their way to your Facebook profile? Something is wrong in this scenario and we really wish that Facebook would change the policy.

In previous posts, we’ve shown examples of proper implementation of the facepile social plugin, notably on the Mashable.com site. If you haven’t ‘liked’ Mashable, then you see no facepile. If you have clicked ‘like’ then you see a facepile but one that shows only your friends who have also ‘liked’ Mashable. The plugin can work the way it’s supposed to. We’re asking why it doesn’t work that way all the time.

Thanks for reading! Please share this post, retweet it, post it on Facebook, whatever it takes to clear up this problem.

 

 

 

Facebook, Facebook 101, Facebook Secrets, Facebook Tricks, Hide Likes from Timeline, Timeline

Facebook 101 – Part 7 – Hiding most of your likes from your Facebook timeline

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It’s fun to share things on Facebook but it’s also prudent sometimes to hide things from your friends and family. If you absolutely love Justin Bieber, Rihanna or even Snoop Dog, maybe you don’t want to share these things with co-workers, friends or family. But you still want to keep up on what these singers are up to, just as you want to get updates on TV shows, movies, etc. We’re sure you can see why you might want to hide your entertainment likes from your Facebook timeline.

TIP: Your entertainment likes and interests are all open by default. The fact that you liked a TV show or a movie, for example, may be past history or you might add a singer to your like list. As soon as you do that, your action will show up on your timeline as well as the newsfeed and the ticker. The time to hide anything like that is before you signify that you like it. Got it?

Here’s how to get to the area you want:

Click the arrow to the right of the word Home on the top right. Choose Account Settings. On the left, look for the words: “You can also visit your privacy settings or edit your timeline to control who sees the info there”. Click ‘your timeline’ to bring up the next page. Close the Basic Info box that is open by default, then look up by your name for the word ‘About’ and the little arrow to the right of it. Click the arrow and choose ‘Likes’.

All of your default Facebook likes, such as Books, Movies, TV shows, Etc. are there. Now, some of these might be OK to have on your timeline/profile. Here is where you get to choose who sees what.

Click the word ‘Edit’ up on the top right. A list of topics follows and beside each topic is a share icon. Here you can choose what to hide from whom or what to hide from everyone. Settings are: Public, Friends, Only me (you), Custom and so on. Custom is the one you would choose if you want to hide the fact that you like Justin Beiber from your daughter, for example, but not all of your other friends. Make sure you click ‘Done Editing’ when you are finished.

These like lists were part of the original Facebook, long before you could simply like a page. They describe you to other people, sure, but maybe you don’t want everyone to know you like the Yankees if you live in Boston.

In our last post we described how to hide page likes from your timeline and you might want to go back to that article here: Hide Page Likes from your Timeline. 

Thanks for reading!

Tip: You cannot hide photo likes or comments or the fact that you liked a comment or note or album on Facebook. Your only choice is to ‘unlike’ or delete your comment. Pretty much everything else is able to be hidden. Read our past posts to find out how.

 

Facebook, Facebook 101, Facebook Secrets, Facebook Tricks, Hide Likes from Timeline

Facebook 101 – Part 6 – How to hide page likes on Facebook

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Here’s now to hide page likes from your Facebook timeline. Page likes don’t show up on the newsfeed or side ticker, only on your timeline. There is no reason why anyone needs to know that you like a certain company’s page or some megastar’s page either. That’s your business, isn’t it? Here’s how to keep that information off of your timeline.

1. Log-in to Facebook and head over to your Profile page. Basically, click on your name, just the right of center. That will bring up your timeline.

2. Click on the Activity Log box just to the right of your name.

3. Anything you have done in the last little while is at the top. To the right of each entry is an icon. If you have liked a Facebook page, it will show up there.

4. Click the icon on the far right and choose ‘Hide from timeline’. You’re done.

You have to be quick about this. Make sure you have Facebook open and are logged in before you like a page that you want to hide from your timeline. Go the page and like it, then head back to your profile and follow the steps we’ve described above. No one but you will know what pages you like.

Thanks for reading! Next up is hiding your other likes on your timeline and from the newsfeed or ticker.

TIP: Remember that you cannot hide the fact that you liked a photo or a comment or that you made a comment on a photo. All of those things are wide open and show up on both your timeline and your friend’s newsfeeds and tickers. There’s nothing you can do about any of that except unlike the photo or delete the comment. Watch out for that, OK?