The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Now
In December, Facebook made a series of bold and controversial changes regarding the nature of its users' privacy on the social networking site. The company once known for protecting privacy to the point of exclusivity (it began its days as a network for college kids only - no one else even had access), now seemingly wants to compete with more open social networks like the microblogging media darling Twitter.
Those of you who edited your privacy settings prior to December's change have nothing to worry about - that is, assuming you elected to keep your personalized settings when prompted by Facebook's "transition tool." The tool, a dialog box explaining the changes, appeared at the top of Facebook homepages this past month with its own selection of recommended settings. Unfortunately, most Facebook users likely opted for the recommended settings without really understanding what they were agreeing to. If you did so, you may now be surprised to find that you inadvertently gave Facebook the right to publicize your private information including status updates, photos, and shared links.
Want to change things back? Read on to find out how.
1. Who Can See The Things You Share (Status Updates, Photo, Videos, etc.)
Probably the most critical of the "privacy" changes (yes, we mean those quotes sarcastically) was the change made to status updates. Although there's now a button beneath the status update field that lets you select who can view any particular update, the new Facebook default for this setting is "Everyone." And by everyone, they mean everyone.
If you accepted the new recommended settings then you voluntarily gave Facebook the right to share the information about the items you post with any user or application on the site. Depending on your search settings, you may have also given Facebook the right to share that information with search engines, too.
To change this setting back to something of a more private nature, do the following:
- From your Profile page, hover your mouse over the Settings menu at the top right and click "Privacy Settings" from the list that appears.
- Click "Profile Information" from the list of choices on the next page.
- Scroll down to the setting "Posts by Me." This encompasses anything you post, including status updates, links, notes, photos, and videos.
- Change this setting using the drop-down box on the right. We recommend the "Only Friends" setting to ensure that only those people you've specifically added as a friend on the network can see the things you post.
2. Who Can See Your Personal Info
Facebook has a section of your profile called "personal info," but it only includes your interests, activities, and favorites. Other arguably more personal information is not encompassed by the "personal info" setting on Facebook's Privacy Settings page. That other information includes things like your birthday, your religious and political views, and your relationship status.
After last month's privacy changes, Facebook set the new defaults for this other information to viewable by either "Everyone" (for family and relationships, aka relationship status) or to "Friends of Friends" (birthday, religious and political views). Depending on your own preferences, you can update each of these fields as you see fit. However, we would bet that many will want to set these to "Only Friends" as well. To do so:
- From your Profile page, hover your mouse over the Settings menu at the top right and click "Privacy Settings" from the list that appears.
- Click "Profile Information" from the list of choices on the next page.
- The third, fourth, and fifth item listed on this page are as follows: "birthday," "religious and political views," and "family and relationship." Locking down birthday to "Only Friends" is wise here, especially considering information such as this is often used in identity theft.
- Depending on your own personal preferences, you may or may not feel comfortable sharing your relationship status and religious and political views with complete strangers. And keep in mind, any setting besides "Only Friends" is just that - a stranger. While "Friends of Friends" sounds innocuous enough, it refers to everyone your friends have added as friends, a large group containing hundreds if not thousands of people you don't know. All it takes is one less-than-selective friend in your network to give an unsavory person access to this information.
3. What Google Can See - Keep Your Data Off the Search Engines
When you visit Facebook's Search Settings page, a warning message pops up. Apparently, Facebook wants to clear the air about what info is being indexed by Google. The message reads:
There have been misleading rumors recently about Facebook indexing all your information on Google. This is not true. Facebook created public search listings in 2007 to enable people to search for your name and see a link to your Facebook profile. They will still only see a basic set of information.
While that may be true to a point, the second setting listed on this Search Settings page refers to exactly what you're allowing Google to index. If the box next to "Allow" is checked, you're giving search engines the ability to access and index any information you've marked as visible by "Everyone." As you can see from the settings discussed above, if you had not made some changes to certain fields, you would be sharing quite a bit with the search engines...probably more information than you were comfortable with. To keep your data private and out of the search engines, do the following:
- From your Profile page, hover your mouse over the Settings menu at the top right and click "Privacy Settings" from the list that appears.
- Click "Search" from the list of choices on the next page.
- Click "Close" on the pop-up message that appears.
- On this page, uncheck the box labeled "Allow" next to the second setting "Public Search Results." That keeps all your publicly shared information (items set to viewable by "Everyone") out of the search engines. If you want to see what the end result looks like, click the "see preview" link in blue underneath this setting.
Take 5 Minutes to Protect Your Privacy
While these three settings are, in our opinion, the most critical, they're by no means the only privacy settings worth a look. In a previous article (written prior to December's changes, so now out-of-date), we also looked at things like who can find you via Facebook's own search, application security, and more.
While you may think these sorts of items aren't worth your time now, the next time you lose out on a job because the HR manager viewed your questionable Facebook photos or saw something inappropriate a friend posted on your wall, you may have second thoughts. But why wait until something bad happens before you address the issue?
Considering that Facebook itself is no longer looking out for you, it's time to be proactive about things and look out for yourself instead. Taking a few minutes to run through all the available privacy settings and educating yourself on what they mean could mean the world of difference to you at some later point...That is, unless you agree with Facebook in thinking that the world is becoming more open and therefore you should too.
Note: Other resources on Facebook's latest changes worth reading include MakeUseOf's 8 Steps Toward Regaining your Privacy, 17 steps to protect your privacy from Inside Facebook, the ACLU's article examining the changes, and DotRights.org's comprehensive analysis of the new settings. If you're unhappy enough to protest Facebook's privacy update, you can sign ACLU's petition. The FTC is also looking into the matter thanks to a complaint filed by a coalition of privacy groups, led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. You can add your voice to the list of complaints here.
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I have been warning people since November about this. My wife and all of her friends are on facebook yet even with my warnings I do not think they are listening. I will forward them this article. Thanks.
Sarah - is there any word on whether Facebook is going to allow us to hide our activity (what I've liked, commented on, pages I'm fanning and "are now friends" postings etc?). I know this was part of their push to public, but perhaps you've heard of a hack or a facebook app that can do this? Has there been a response from the developer community?
@Steffan: I haven't heard of any plans in this area, but I'll look into it. If any of our readers know, please leave a comment!
I agree with the first 2, not sure if I don't want Google to pick my updates. They sometimes include my blog post links.
Besides I have nothing personal in my updates that I'd not want the whole world to see.
@steffan
If you are using Firefox, search for the addon Facebook Filter. It will filter those of your friends from appearing in your stream.
Don't know if you can hide those activities yourself from appearing in others' stream
I'll admit, there is a modicum of value in going through these privacy settings and this post was a great public service, Sarah.
But I think it's important to keep in mind no matter how strict you make your settings, privacy on Facebook is an illusion. Nothing stops your friends, or friends of friends from sharing info in a more public forum. And Facebook, which is a for-profit business, retains ALL your data. Their allegiance lays with their stakeholders, not you or your desire for privacy.
And try to find the button that used to say "Don't share any of my information through the Facebook API." It no longer exists. Every time you click "allow" on any facebook application you have given ALL, not some, ALL your profile access to a faceless 3rd party.
I'm not saying everyone should run and hide, I just think sometimes people fine tune their "privacy" settings on FB and think they have protected themselves. Nothing digital, including FB, is ever truly private.
There is something very, very wrong when RRW needs to post a Facebook privacy how-to tip.
It used to be that facebook enabled private conversations. Now they are broadcasting private conversations.
What's next? How about the facebook application that will search your hard drive for email and pictures to publish?
Because of these shenanigans, I have pretty much let my facebook profile go dormant.
@Mike Raffensperger-
That is b*llsh!t and lets Facebook off the hook. The fact is that facebook got the information under the pretense that the information would only be visible to friends - not to the world!
Facebook has been slowly changing the privacy policy. Because the changes are gradually happening people have not really noticed how much information that was once private is now public.
Very, very true - which is why people should not share anything on facebook. Establish the connection on facebook and then take the conversation off facebook.
@Mike: Very true re: FB apps!
You may be interested in these old posts about that -
How Safe are Facebook Applications? http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_safe_are_facebook_applications.php
and
What Facebook Quizzes Know About You:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_facebook_quizzes_know_about_you.php
Hey Sarah,
I also wrote about this ... also with a similar title a month ago "10 New Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know" http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/12/facebook-privacy-new/
If you want something kept private do not use Facebook, Myspace or any other social networking application. It's that simple.
Remove this comment as you wish, but I'm experiencing difficulties with loading your web pages, frequently causing Firefox to crash.
Just attempted to load
How Safe are Facebook Applications? http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_safe_are_facebook_applications.php
twice, without success, resulting in browser crashes.
I read your posts from Google Reader as I did a few hours ago, with one or two stories resulting in Firefox crashes, this post and one or two others loaded without a hitch!
I'm using Firefox 3.5.7
The laws on privacy may vary from country to country, but the laws of economics in the information age do not. Information has value and therefore is traded like any other product or service on the planet, following the basic law of supply and demand and under the supervision of local and global regulators ... NQ Logic recommends reading the impact of Facebook steps forward and The New Privacy Age on www.nqlogic.com
Facebook is a known front for the Central Intelligence Agency... its no wonder they want to exploit the commercial value of what they have created. Connecting the dots is what its all about.. and if you can make some revenue to compensate for your investment, then all the better.
good article. It allows those of us promoting to chose what to show to the public.
An alternative to facebook
Dont pay for facebook or have your privacy compromised.
join www.getzsocial.com it is totally free invite your friends by forwarding this link.
www.getzsocial.com
I'm pretty careful with my FB privacy, but I still managed to find one setting I missed thanks to this post. Have Retweeted it, thanks a million (@kalena)
Great post. Thanks for bringing this to everyone's attention as well. While I am not particularly concerned about keeping everything private it is valuable to know how easily you can lose control of some relatively sensitive material.
You don't really know how important it will be to keep some of these things protected until it is too late. I had a bit of a run in with someone who wished ill towards me and it was beyond frightening how much they could find out about me on the wonder web. Even just using Facebook public listings as a jump-off point they were able to use the little information they found there, plug it into Google and they were off.
This post is a great reminder that folks should be careful with what they are sharing online! I am all for being open and transparent but it can get a little shady if the wrong people get your hands on this information.
Thanks again for the read!
Sadly, none of these suggestions protect you from your friends' ignorance.
If a friend has a public wall, and comments on one of your photos, status updates, or links, then a link to that content is made public on their wall. This therefore bypasses any privacy settings you have set-up. This back-door is worse with photos, because Facebook always provides a link back to the album regardless.
More here: http://blog.benpowell.co.uk/2009/12/facebook-shares-private-information-via.html
I do agree with Facebook and I'm happy to see the ongoing integration with Friendfeed. To me then, this is of little concern as I widely publish my activities already.
It's remarkable that back in the day Facebook was criticized for being a walled garden, when now they are for opening up.
In any case, you could always use a private Twitter account instead. Even, Twitter could benefit from this and make its privacy more granular instead.
But agreeing with a few of the commenters here: need privacy, send an email, call, or talk in the park with a newspaper covering your lips...
Btw, signing in with OpenID failed, submitting the comment was awkward too. Have a look at that.
Based on the comments here, people are really, really confused about the definition of the term SOCIAL NETWORK.
Facebook is NOT a private communications tool and it is NOT a business tool. IT is a SOCIAL tool, designed to make it easy to find people and connect them together. In addition, if you don't control the medium, you don't control the information.
The sooner all of you wake up and realize this, the sooner you will start using Facebook for its intended purpose and we won't have to read any more stupid, pointless articles about Facebook privacy.
Great!I m using Facebook but i was not aware of this must to do settings.I have done all these settings and also i have shared this information with my friends.So godd and helpful post!
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great article! thanks sarah for sharing!
I have set my privacy settings on Facebook. Going to do a cross check if I left anything out. Thanks for sharing this Sarah.
Miz Perez writes 'hover your mouse..."
I think she must mean "hover your cursor." I mean, what good does it do to pick up your mouse and hold it near your screen?
I think we are all concerned about our privacy and now a days we should give prime importance to website security as now nothing is safe as everything is prone to hacking. Still, Thanks for this valuable advice.
Thanks for the valuable info. I was probably the last among all my friends to open an account on Facebook because I was concerned about my privacy. Well, in my case, I mainly didn't want to be found by people from my past whom I would rather forget about. I couldn't believe that Facebook would require your last name, and then your full name would be available for people to search.
Great information, I knew most of these settings, but a few I needed to refresh upon.
This is ridiculous. It's not that bad. If people would pay /attention/ to what facebook tells them, it would not be as much of a surprise. I've been on facebook since the beginning (ok, probably 6 months later) and have never had a 'privacy' problem because I pay attention to what facebook communicates about setting your privacy! I have way too many friends who don't like facebook or are worried about it because they don't understand the privacy settings - and there is a lot of media blowing out of proportion-ness of this sort.
To be fair, facebook could do a better job of publicizing how they work with privacy settings and how to appropriately set yours - - - but STILL the fact remains: you sign up, you are responsible for understanding those implications.
I have read everyone's comments and I found them all very useful. I did figure out most of the settings except the search one. thank you for your asistance and your knowledge
I've seen examples of what can cause people to go private on FB, and a large part of it relates to snubbing users who do annoying things.
In order to configure FB to treat the delicate sensibilities of others as if they were gentle, fragile things, users are trying to find a way to live in the open but so that certain annoying friends cannot see their rejections or indifference. I say, cowboy up. If someone doesn't like what you've done, don't get wrapped up in the fact that they have decided to treat it like something found burning on their doorstep on Halloween. Just move on. Don't try so hard. Read a book and don't get offended.
I believe that your lack of interest in someone and their lame jokes or updates becomes a legitimate reason for unfriending and sideways kvetching, and you should have that right, no matter what the privacy setting might say.
Part of being social is to avoid getting outraged over nothing.
It amazes me that we need posts like this to remind people to protect themselves online. Perhaps, as social media users, we're becoming too accustomed to skipping over the blocks of text that make up a site's terms of service, agreeing with whatever the internet asks of us, and plugging in all sorts of personal information, all while thinking that it is perfectly safe. Part of using a site like facebook is using the settings available to you to set up your privacy, so you reach the people you want to. Even with respect to reaching a broader audience, you won't get the results you're looking for if you can't manage, and in this case reduce, your privacy settings. Perhaps the social media craze is developing faster than people are learning to properly use it? Or perhaps users simply don't care enough? Either way, it's making for a dangerous environment when the people with the know how are figuring out how to take advantage of the users who don't think enough to protect themselves.
The writer of this article seems to think that everyone in the world will object to there being publicly available information about themselves. I think that's sort of weird, actually. For those of you who read this article and immediately go to change your Facebook settings, I have bad news: you're almost certainly not as interesting as you think you are.
And the whole bit about people having problems with employers because of photos on Facebook is a scare tactic that's been dreadfully overused. Has anyone done an actual study on this? I don't mean anecdotal evidence, I mean actual research. It seems to me that there are enough young people out there who are disinclined to hide their off hour activities that if someone wanted to discriminate against them there'd be a much smaller labor pool. Besides, who wants to work for someone who actually cares whether you drink beer at night or whether you're a Methodist or a Gemini or a Republican or whatever?
Good advice for people who care about their privacy.
I think you missed an important one -- change this if you do not want your list of friends and their photos to be public information. I guess there are some work-arounds if someone really wants to get at this information, and maybe that is why this isn't considered one of the "privacy settings". Last night I received an email from a friend's scorned ex-fiance which made me go look for a solution. He wasn't friends with her; I wasn't friends with her; but she could see his list of friends and send emails to each of us. I don't really care about friends exes..but I don't want strangers sending emails to my teenage nieces and somehow implying that we are friends. A stranger can get photos (can see relative age), names, and connections. I think that this is where Facebook may have opened themselves to potential legal issues down the road. Something bad is bound to happen.
Here is what to do -- Hide your Friends’ List from everyone but your friends:
a. Go to the FRIENDS box under your profile picture
b. Click on the PENCIL icon (located to the right of the word FRIENDS) to edit
c. Make sure that you have UNCHECKED the box that says Show Friends to Everyone.
Facebook is now trying to change their privacy option accordingly to users choice to avoid any missusing in future and people really dont know much about new privacy features. Thanks for info
Steve Foerster: "For those of you who read this article and immediately go to change your Facebook settings, I have bad news: you're almost certainly not as interesting as you think you are."
Amazing that someone here appears to have never heard of ID theft, a very real problem. This has very little to do with vanity and a lot to do with protecting yourself from rogues out there. It's the electronic equivalent of not leaving your front door wide open. Sadly, too many people believe ID theft will never happen to them, when with a little thought they can go a long way to preventing it.
You have to be really careful with all these settings. I remember when I was first setting my profile I didn't know what some of the settings meant. So I blocked the things I wasn't sure about. Now I know it was a good move because your profile is quite public at the beginning, before you change your settings so it's important to do it at once.
anything with more security i will take it..just has to spend some times to set it up..
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