Facebook Security
It seems like every week there is another setting buried deep within the bowls of Facebook that you now need to click on in order to keep your online identity private. This goes against the conventional wisdom of “Opt-in is better than surprise you have to Opt-out”. Dispite many complaints, Facebook still refuses to adopt this concept. Lifehacker has a great run down of all the privacy settings you need to be aware of. They cover the basics all the way down to settings like “Facial recognition” and “Places” (which track your every move or where people even say you are).
The Basic Privacy Settings: What You Share
Facebook’s main Privacy Settings page has a pretty good overview of what you’ll want to change, and presents it in a way that’s mostly easy to understand. Here’s how each of the four sections work.
Connecting on Facebook
The first section of Facebook’s Privacy page is the “directory”. From here, you can control who can find you on Facebook and how. Click on the “View Settings” link under “Connecting on Facebook” to access those settings. You can make each category viewable by one of five different groups: everyone on Facebook, friends of your friends and anyone in your networks, just your friends and anyone in your networks, friends of your friends only, and just your friends.
If you don’t want everyone seeing all your information (like where you live or where you work), you should change them here. I let anyone search for me, send me friend requests, and see my friend list, but other than that I’ve left everything else as “Friends of Friends”. Chances are high that if someone’s friending me on Facebook, I know them through someone else, so it shouldn’t be hard for them to find me—everyone else I’d rather keep in the dark about who I am, where I live, and where I work.
The Basic Privacy Settings: What You Share
Facebook’s main Privacy Settings page has a pretty good overview of what you’ll want to change, and presents it in a way that’s mostly easy to understand. Here’s how each of the four sections work.
Connecting on Facebook
The first section of Facebook’s Privacy page is the “directory”. From here, you can control who can find you on Facebook and how. Click on the “View Settings” link under “Connecting on Facebook” to access those settings. You can make each category viewable by one of five different groups: everyone on Facebook, friends of your friends and anyone in your networks, just your friends and anyone in your networks, friends of your friends only, and just your friends.
If you don’t want everyone seeing all your information (like where you live or where you work), you should change them here. I let anyone search for me, send me friend requests, and see my friend list, but other than that I’ve left everything else as “Friends of Friends”. Chances are high that if someone’s friending me on Facebook, I know them through someone else, so it shouldn’t be hard for them to find me—everyone else I’d rather keep in the dark about who I am, where I live, and where I work.
Sharing on Facebook
This is the biggest section, which determines who can see your status updates, photos, contact information, and more. It’s pretty easy to adjust from the main Privacy page. You can set it all to “Everyone”, “Friends of Friends”, “Friends Only”, or customize your own settings. The table will provide a pretty easy-to-read overview of what your current settings are. This part’s mostly up to you, though I’ve kept most of this stuff to “Friends Only”.
You can click on the “Customize Settings” link below the table to further refine your choices. That lets you set each specific option to viewable by everyone, friends of friends, friends and your networks, Friends only, and so on. You can even set specific phone numbers of email addresses separately, which is pretty nice. In addition, you can also create custom friend lists (say, “work buddies”) that you can include or exclude from certain information.. I’d comb through this section no matter what you do, since there are some settings here that aren’t on the main table. We’ll talk more about those in the next section, “Lesser-Known Settings”.
Applications and Websites
This is where you’ll control which Facebook applications can access your profile, and what web sites outside of Facebook can access your account. Click on the Edit settings button to tweak them.
Frankly, I think Facebook applications are awful. With the exception of certain apps (like Twitter, the iPhoto Uploader, or other legit programs I use), I try and keep this clean. Facebook applications, on the whole, are insecure, spammy, and just downright annoying. Next to the list of “Apps You Use”, hit the “Edit Settings” button to see the full list. From there, you can remove an app by clicking the “X”, or you can hit “Edit Settings” next to an app to see what information of yours it can access and what it can do. I usually draw the line at an application posting on my wall, unless it’s something I want to post to my wall (like Twitter). Again, this will vary from person to person.
The rest of this page you’ll probably want to lock down as much as possible. Under “Info accessible thorugh your friends”, you’ll want to uncheck all those boxes, so your friends’ apps can’t access your information (God knows what spammy applications they’re using). You’ll want to disable the Instant personalization feature as well, which will let sites like Pandora and Yelp use your Facebook account to give you extra “features” (also known as: spam). Lastly, unless you want your Facebook page coming up in Google results, you’ll want to turn off Public search as well.
Block Lists
You may think the block lists are only for ex-significant others, but there are actually some good features in there. For example, not only can you block users, but you can block app invites or event invites from specific users. So, if you have a friend that you like, but they’re one of those people that invites every ding-dong Facebook user to their event (you know, even if they don’t live in the same state), you can block event invites from them. Similarly, if you have friends that play way too many games on Facebook, you can stop them from inviting you.
To tweak these settings, just hit “Edit Your Lists” under Block Lists. To add a friend to any of those lists, just type in their name. You can also block them from the main Facebook interface. You can block a user that wrote on your wall, ignore event invites when someone invites you to an event, or block an app that someone invites you to. So you don’t always have to come back to this page to block someone.
Lesser-Known Settings You’ll Want to Tweak
Apart from the more obvious settings above, Facebook has implemented a few features that aren’t as well-known. Some are a bit privacy-invading, and need to be turned off, while others are good for your privacy but have to be turned on (nice job, Facebook). Here are the ones you’ll want to keep an eye out for.
Let Others See Posts or Photos Your Friends Are Tagged In
By default, when you tag one of your friends in a status update or photo, that automatically opens up that update or photo to be seen by all of their friends. If you’d like to turn this off, just head to Facebook’s Privacy Settings page and under the table, uncheck the box that says “Let friends of people in my photos and posts see them”. This box overrides all your other privacy settings, which can be pretty bad if you don’t realize it (i.e., if you tag someone, it’ll be viewable by all their friends even if you have the status or photo set to “friends only”).
Turn Off Facebook Places
Facebook’s Places feature allows you to “check in” to businesses and other places on a digital map, so people can see where you are. This is a huge privacy issue, and while the act of checking in is done manually (Facebook won’t automatically share your location with people), it’s still worth turning off entirely if you aren’t going to use it. You never know when a Facebook bug might surface or when you might just hit the wrong button and share your location with everyone you know.
To turn it off, just head back into your Privacy Settings and hit the “Customize Settings” link under the table. Scroll down to “Things I Share” and set “Places I check in” to “Only Me”, which will keep Facebook from sharing your location with anyone. You also might as well Disable the “Include me in ‘People Here Now’” setting while you’re at it, which is right below the “Places I check in” setting.
You’ll also definitely want to go to “Things Others Share” and disable the “Friends can check me into Places” setting, which stops your friends from sharing your location from their account. By default, this should be off for most people, but it’s probably a good idea to double-check.
Turn Off Facial Recognition
Facebook has also added a feature that scans newly uploaded photos for familiar faces. If it matches your face to one of their photos, it will prompt them to tag you in it. If you’d rather not have this feature on, you’ll need to head into your Privacy Settings and once again click the “Customize Settings” link at the bottom of the table. This time, scroll down to “Things Others Share” and disable the “Suggest Photos of Me to Friends” feature.
(via Lifehacker)