When Facebook changed their (your) privacy controls in September of 2011, they allowed one setting to control your old post visibility while giving you more control over your ongoing posts. Here’s how to adjust your settings for things that you’ve posted IN THE PAST.

1. Open Facebook.

2. Click on Account on the top right of any page.

3. Click on Privacy Settings on the drop down menu.

3. Look for the second last section, titled Limit the Audience for Past Posts.

4. Click on the blue link to the right that reads : Manage Past Post Visibility.

5. Read the little blurb menu that pops up.

6. Choose to Limit Old Posts or not, it’s up to you. I would suggest changing ALL old posts to Friends Only but you may have different settings on your old material.

7. Confirm the change in the next menu that pops up if you have changed everything to Friends Only.

That’s it. You’re done. Everything that was shared before with everyone is now only shared with your friends. Everything that you post from now on has to be set to your specifications.

Don’t be shy. Ask questions, comment, scream, yell or just say hi. It’s all good.

Thanks for reading.

Follow me on Twitter: @_BrianMahoney

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My last post seemed too complicated for some people. Too many words, not enough pictures perhaps! Here’s a five step process to ensuring that strangers can’t comment on your shared items in Facebook.

1. Open Facebook (duh)

2. Click ‘Account’ on the top right of any page.

3. Click ‘Privacy settings’ on the menu that drops down.

4. Click ‘Edit Settings’ to the right of  ‘How tags work’.

5. Turn ‘Profile review’ ON (this allows you to approve or ignore any tags BEFORE they appear on your profile.)

6. Turn Tag Review ON (this allows you to approve or ignore any tags that someone else puts on your posts.)

7. Set Profile visibility to your desired settings. Mine are set to ‘* Custom’ then to ‘only me’. I don’t want anyone else to see any posts that I’m tagged in.

8. Set ‘Tag suggestions’ to OFF. (That’s my choice, yours might be different.)

9. Turn “Friends Can Check You Into Places’ OFF. (Again, this is my choice.)

10. Click ‘Done’ on the bottom right of the menu to save your settings.

That’s it for your first round. Pat yourself on the back.

Part two is coming right up. I don’t want to make this too long!

Thanks for reading.

Follow me on Twitter: @_BrianMahoney
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There’s always a bit of a flap whenever Facebook changes their (or your) privacy settings. Recently, Facebook adjusted some of their settings and some people complained that strangers could comment on their photos and posts. Depending on your privacy settings, which I have described in a previous post, strangers may indeed pop into your life. To prove this I did an experiment to illustrate my point.

I have three Facebook accounts. Don’t ask why, it’s irrelevant! Hahaha. As far as being friends with myself, I have set up a triangle of sorts. Each account is friends with one other me. No account is friends with every me. Each account has its privacy set to Friends as far as sharing photos and posts. There are other settings for each photo album, for instance, but none of my shared material is open to Everyone.

If I post a photo on one account, the account that is listed as a friend can see it, of course. If that friend tags that photo with the name of someone who isn’t a friend, lo and behold that third person, a complete frickin’ stranger, can see the photo unless I have set the new privacy for tags correctly.  Here is where you can make the changes:

You’ll notice that I have set the toggle to ‘On’ in order to either approve or disapprove of any tags on any of my material. If someone tags one of my pictures or a note I have written, I instantly receive an alert that will allow me to say yes or no to that tag. The third party who isn’t a friend cannot see my stuff until I say they can.

Here is what the approval box looks like:

Once you have accepted the tag, the stranger (in this case me) can view and comment on your post. They can also ignore the tag, depending on their own settings for tags. If you don’t want strangers seeing or commenting on your ‘friends only’ items, make sure you change your tag privacy settings.

Finally, now that you’re totally confused, you can also remove these tags from your posts. When you go to the item to view it, you will see the new tags on the bottom. There is an ‘edit’ button there which allows you to delete any tags that are there, some or a few, whatever you want. Basically, you still have full control over your posts, actually more control than before. Sometimes it looks as if Facebook screwed something up but, this time anyway, they didn’t.

It’s that easy. Read my previous post and come back for subsequent posts on this and other tech topics. Follow me on Twitter

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The gist of the new Facebook privacy settings has to do with what you share and who sees it and, even more important, who can comment on your shared material. If you don’t have your privacy settings tuned to the new set-up, you might find that Jill Schmoo has commented on your latest graduation photo. Here’s a, hopefully, short run-down on keeping strangers out of your stuff.

If you haven’t logged in to Facebook recently, you’ll see a new notice as soon as you do. Here’s what you’ll see:

If you take the tour, you’re greeted with menus that ask you if you want to tell people where you are and who you are with. Finally, you’re asked about who you want to share this information with. You can opt out of sharing location, and I would strongly suggest that you choose this option. Each time you post something, you can tag people just like you could before but now those tags open up other features that you have to opt out of if you want to maintain your privacy. An additional setting allows you to approve tags, which is completely new. This option will create a new set of alerts for you to make a decision about but you won’t be faced with incessant tagging as you might have faced previously. I’ll explain this in detail as we go.

Step by Step:

1. First opt out of sharing location. If you want to opt in, you’re on your own if you get stalked!

2. Head over to your Account button then down to Privacy Settings. If you’re reading this, you are concerned about sharing. This area of Facebook should be familiar to you already. If not, get used to it and scout around for all of the settings that pertain to what you share and who you share it with. Do you want to share your phone numbers? Your workplace? Think about it, OK?

This is where you should be :

4. At the top, click on the ‘Edit your profile’ link. Choose what you want to share with whom. Run through all of the menus on the left (Basic Information, Profile picture, Friends and family, etc.) and use the drop-down buttons on the right of the bluey-grey area to select the level of sharing. I don’t share my friends with anyone, nor do I share my email address or my mobile phone number. Again, get used to this set of menus and fine-tune it for your comfort settings. If you’re on Facebook and you aren’t old enough to legally be on it, make sure these settings don’t lead a path to your door or to your school or workplace. Don’t be paranoid, just be smart.

Here’s the menu I’m describing:

(You’ll note that I don’t share my year of birth with anyone. That way Google can’t tune their ads to my age.)

5. Next comes your default privacy. I have mine set to ‘Friends’. Default is ‘Public’ but I don’t want everyone to know everything about me. I don’t even want my friends to know everything about me. You decide what’s good for you. The ‘Custom’ setting allows you to fine tune your settings even more. If you have someone who you don’t want to unfriend, tune your privacy so that this person can’t see everything you do. He or she will see what you want them to see, not the same things that your normal friends can see.

6. The next section, ‘How you connect’, has to do with whether your profile is private, available to friends or available to everyone as well as who can post on your wall and who can see the posts of others. Here’s a shot of what my settings are :

7. The next section has to do with the new Facebook tag and comment settings. Check this one out carefully. My settings mean that I have to approve tags on friend’s material before they go on my profile. These tags may still appear elsewhere on Facebook but they won’t be on my profile. Next, I get to approve tags that my friends put on my stuff. I used to be able to tag Joe on Jill’s photo but now I can’t unless Jill wants me to. Actually, this is more private than the old setting. ‘Profile visibility’ allows you to change who sees posts that you are tagged in. This could be everyone, friends or Custom. Custom can be set to Friends, Friends of friends, Specific people or Only me (you). You can also block these posts from certain people. To me, this is complete flexibility in setting privacy settings.

The next setting, Tag suggestions, is only available in some countries, not here in Canada.

Finally, you get to choose who ‘checks you into places’ using the mobile Places app. Mine is set to ‘Off’.

This is long enough for one post. I’ll continue this on another day. Questions or comments are welcome. Follow me on Twitter: @_BrianMahoney Tweet

Thanks for reading.

Last time, I talked about a simple way to block spam from your MSN Hotmail account. This time, I’ll explain a more detailed way to keep that spam from coming back. If you don’t know too much about the Internet, I’ll give you a small lesson before we begin.

A domain name is something you might be familiar with. Hotmail.com, for instance, is a domain name. All spam emails originate at a domain of some sort. The email address that sends the mail has two parts, the part before the @ sign and the part after the @ sign. The part before the @ sign means nothing and is usually gibberish. The part after the @ symbol is what you want to block. Why? Read on.

Let’s say that 123skidoo.com is sending out spam. Joe@123skidoo.com sends you a piece of spam. Using my technique that I described last time you will block joe@123skidoo.com. What is sally@123skidoo.com sends you spam? You’d have to block her, too. Today, you’ll learn how to block 123skidoo.com to ensure that no one at that domain sends you spam. OK, well they may still send you spam but you won’t see it.

Using the same technique as I described yesterday, go into your junk mail folder, check mark the emails you want to sweep and choose Block From under the Sweep button. Then STOP!

Here is a shot of the menu that you want to stop at:

You’ll see that the domain name, mail.comboentry.com, is where the spam email came from. The name, grayson.thakwraa, means nothing. If you just block that person, someone else at that domain will continue sending spam. You have to block ‘mail.comboentry.com’ to eliminate ALL spam from that domain.

Highlight and copy (Hold the left mouse button, drag the mouse over the domain name and then right click and choose COPY  the part after the @ symbol as shown here:

Then click Block All and wait for a second or two. Next, click on the link that says ‘Manage your block list’ as shown here:

Once you get to the next page, paste the domain name into the slot that reads ‘Blocked email address or domain’ and then choose Add to List. Here’s how it looks :

You can see on the right side that I have many domains blocked already. Now, I have this one blocked and I won’t see any spam from this guy again, no matter who sends it from that domain.

This post is longer than most but I think it’s important to keep spam out of your email folder. This works well for hotmail which I use every day. I never use the email account that I get with my ISP and you shouldn’t either. An ISP email account puts email right into your computer while hotmail keeps the email on its servers. More about that later.

Thanks for reading!