What’s nice about Facebook is that it provides a way to easily and quickly stay in touch with friends and family in ways we never could have imagined. I can see how easy it is to share information, and to share much more than you might have otherwise. It’s becoming the rule of the day, of course. People’s personal boundaries are wavering.
With the recent launch of personalization and use of Facebook on websites and applications, use of personal information is increasing significantly – perhaps more so than expected by some. With all this sharing of personal information, our entire world is becoming one rather all-encompassing small town. We all know what everyone is doing.
If you want to be a bit selective, however, in what you provide to the world at large, to websites offering personalization, and to applications that work with Facebook, there are some privacy settings to review in Facebook. Perhaps you’d like to change some from the defaults; perhaps not. There is some flexibility. Read on for some basic settings to review. There are levels in each to determine how much you want to share.
Note: This post focuses on just a few settings. Within Facebook, there is much additional information available regarding privacy settings. For more information and a link to a Safety section, you can always click the Privacy link in the page footer.
Update: 6/18/10 Privacy settings have changed. I will be updating this post.
Profile Privacy
There is some information that is always public. However, you have some control with the Everyone – Friends of Friends – Only Friends – Customize settings. I’m assuming that by now, everyone knows what those are. There’s information within Facebook if you’d like to learn more.
Set Profile Privacy
1. Account > Privacy Settings
The Privacy Settings page displays.
2. Click Profile Information.
3. Set access levels for each item. The least restrictive is Everyone. The most restrictive of the preset options is Only Friends. However, you can use the Customize setting to hide some information from specific people or groups. In the following graphic, Only Friends has been selected for all:
4. Click Preview My Profile
Your profile displays as it would to many on Facebook. If you used the Customize option for any settings and blocked certain friends or lists, you can type in the names on this page to see a preview for that situation.
Example of a profile within Facebook with everything set to Only Friends (and the profile picture removed):
If you’ve set some items to Friends of Friends or Everyone, more information displays on the preview.
5. Click Back to Privacy Settings to return to the main privacy screen. If you’re not satisified with what displays in the preview, change some settings to make them more or less restrictive and recheck the preview until it’s set up the way you’d like.
Note: your profile may display differently outside of Facebook if you’ve enabled search engines to include your profile in searches. That setting is described further below in this post.
Social Plugins and Notifications
This new feature was launched on April 21, 2010. I am going to be researching and testing this more, so am not going to give many details yet. It will undoubtedly require its own post.
In the meantime, review the information about it in Facebook in the privacy section. If you’d like, you can opt-out at least through one setting. I’ve included instructions below, but be aware that I’ve not yet tested this entirely. Nor do I know if there are other related settings, but I imagine there are. I will be looking at it, so check back.
To opt-out
1. Account > Privacy Settings
2. Applications and Websites
3. Instant Personalization
4. Edit Setting
5. Uncheck/deselect “Allow select partners to instantly personalize their features when I first arrive on their websites”
Update: 4/26/10
I’ve been testing this some, and have found that just opting out in Facebook doesn’t work. I believe that you’ll need to opt out at each website as well. Will continue with testing.
Notifications When You’re Tagged in Photos & Other Items
You can set it so you receive an e-mail notification when you’re tagged in a photo, video, post, or note. While some notifications can be sent to mobile devices, tagging options cannot. All notifications are sent to the e-mail address you have on record.
1. Account > Account Settings
2. Notifications tab
3. Set tagging items as you like in the Facebook, Photos, Notes, and Video sections.
4. Save Changes
There are other tagging settings as well. See the Application Access to Your Personal Information section below.
Use of Your Image or Name in Ads
As you’ve no doubt noticed, ads are displayed in Facebook. If you allow, friends will be able to see your name or photo in some of those ads. The only other option is to allow access to no one. One way or the other, you may want to review this.
1. Account > Account Settings
2. Facebook Ads tab
3. In the third-party ad section, select No One or Only My Friends and click Save Changes.
4. Scroll far down the page in the Facebook ad section. Select No One or Only My Friends and click Save Changes.
Application Access to Your Personal Information
It’s possible that you and your friends use some applications on Facebook. These applications can pull much personal information when installed. If you have installed one, you’ll note that there’s a caution that the application may pull information about your friends and other items. You can see a list of what information applications can use, and set it so some or none of your information is available to an application that your friend uses, but you do not.
1. Account > Privacy Settings
2. Applications and Websites
3. What Your Friends Share About You > Edit Settings.
4. Select or deselect items that you want made available to applications. Everything is deselected in the graphic above; select or deselect items as you wish.
5. Save Changes.
Applications You’ve Used
There’s a list of all the applications you’ve used, and there are some customization options. You may want to take a look at the list sometime. To me, it was surprising. There may be some applications you’d like to change or remove.
1. Account > Application Settings
2. In the Show drop-down list, select an item to review.
3. Review the list of applications. Customize them as you’d like. If an X displays in the far right column, you can delete the application. For some applications, you can undo the deletion. To delete an application, click the X. Of course, you can always reinstall an app if you change your mind.
Listing in Search Engine Results
You have two choices regarding being listed by external search engines such as Google. Either you can be listed or not. If you choose to be listed, your basic information is displayed when someone clicks on your link in the search results. Like the basic profile information, you can preview how that appears and decide whether or not you’d like your Facebook account visible to the world.
1. Account > Privacy Settings
2. Search
3. In Public Search Results, select or deselect Allow. To see what your profile would look like in search results, click See Preview.
No matter what you choose, you can test this afterward by searching for yourself in a search engine and see if your Facebook profile comes up. You may want to check several hours later or the next day. Search engines have historically crawled the web and indexed content at regular intervals (daily, mostly). Now, real-time searches are available. So the change may show up within a short timeframe, or the next day. As an aside, it certainly never hurts to run a search on the main search sites periodically to see what’s out there about you -
In closing …
All of this is very fluid. There are so many changes occurring now with social media, real-time searches, and other things that I think it’s worthwhile to try and keep up to some degree, particularly with regard to privacy. I’ll do what I can to provide info for you, so stay tuned!
I’d also like to reiterate that it is always a good idea to review the privacy information within Facebook if you have more questions.
Thanks for the post, Julie. It’s so important we stay on top of the privacy issue in social media; it’s changing fast.
This is very timely and needed information. More and more people are going to need to know how to opt out of the new Facebook options that were just announced.