4 Pages Control Your Privacy on Facebook

by M. Elizabeth Williams on Jul.25, 2010, under facebook, privacy, social media

What does Facebook know about you, and what is it telling the rest of the world?

Recently, much ado has been made about Facebook’s privacy settings, and that’s not just from the Libertarians and the tin-foil-hat people. In fact, according to a recent post on Mashable, the privacy setting fiascos have left Facebook with one of the worst customer satisfaction ratings in its category, one point ahead of MySpace (who took the honor of being worst, for obvious reasons.)

The 2010 American Customer Survey Index conducted by ForeSee Results gave Facebook 64 out of 100 points in a customer satisfaction survey; that’s lower than any other business in its category. However, it’s not at the bottom of the social media heap; MySpace received one point less.

ForeSee Results CEO Larry Freed says that “privacy concerns, frequent changes to the website, and commercialization and advertising” are responsible for the low rating.

–Samuel Axon, “Facebook Among Web’s Worst in Customer Satisfaction”, Mashable, mashable.com

However, while Facebook continue to constantly change their website for no discernable reason — even recently playing with the idea of removing my favorite feature the “Most Recent” news feed — you can combat the private information purge of Facebook by using 4 pages, all located under the Account Tab to the far, top-right of your Facebook page.

Edit Friends: This may seem like a strange place to start when talking about privacy online, but your privacy is only as strong as its weakest link, and for many people, that’s your friends list. Sure, some people take pride in maxing out the number of “friends” on Facebook, but those people tend to not be too concerned with hiding embarrassing or important information from employers, hiring managers, or litigious ex-spouses.On the menu on the far-left side, click “All connections”. Now, go through those connections, including the companies you friended instead of fanned, and ask yourself “Do I trust this person enough not to share or leak my information?” If the answer is “No” or worse still “I don’t know,” it’s time to ax them.
If you want to keep those friends of a friend, you can get a little more sophisticated and create individual Lists for trusted associates, and in later settings only allow certain lists to see certain things. Click on the “Add to List” drop box next to a name, scroll down until you either find the appropriate list or type in the name of the list in the empty box at the bottom. I have my friends divided up into lists such as “High School” “Past Employers” “Clients” “England Friends” etc. but yours can be as simple as “Trusted” and “Not Trusted”
Account Settings: There are a lot of important settings that you should check out under the Account Settings section of your Account Tab, but we’ll just go through the basics here. In Account Settings there are seven tabs to become familiar with:Settings: Want to deactivate your account, change your password or your name? This is where you do it.Networks: This lists the networks you’ve joined based on your alumni status, work history, and location. Don’t want the entire Penn State alumni community knowing about the killer keg stand you did over the weekend — when you were supposed to be networking for your company? Keep your networks in mind when posting.Notifications: Want to know when someone on Facebook sneezes? Well, there isn’t an app for that yet, but this is where you can set your account up to receive emails and text messages based on other events including status updates, birthdays, being tagged in a photograph, and more. I, personally, am notified of almost anything involving my name on Facebook–it makes it easier to untag myself in compromising photographs that way.
Mobile: Want to be able to post to Facebook by phone? Add your phone number under the mobile tab and you can “receive friend requests, messages, wall posts, and status updates on your phone, or upload photos and videos on the go.” I have no idea why you’d want to know that Liz is having a Lemon party or Bob’s having a spaghetti breakfast, but if your identity and brand is that important, you might want to keep tabs on your network through this feature.

Language: Set your native language here.

Payments: Farmville addicts and individuals who buy little buttons and graphics to paste on each other’s walls can use this tab to monitor their credits, payment information, etc.

Facebook Ads This page is very important to people interested in Privacy. Not only can you set the page to disallow ads to use your information when broadcasting to friends (for example: Wegman’s, a company I’ve friended might want to put “Elizabeth Likes This!” under its ad when targeting my friends. I can turn off their ability to do that here.) This is also where you stop ads from using your profile photo.
Privacy Settings: Quite possible the most important and misunderstood setting in the accounts tab is the Privacy Setting. If you’re serious about Facebook privacy, this is where a good chunk of time should be spent!
Basic Directory Information: Click on the link to “View settings” to determine who can search for you, send you messages or friend requests, and see your education, work, interests, and activities information.

Sharing on Facebook is where we put some of the prior information like custom lists to work to keep privacy high. Select “Custom” from the types of settings in the Left-side column, then click on “Customize settings” like to get down an dirty with your privacy. Now, you can select from a drop down list who gets to see the things you share, the things others share about you, and your contact information. The settings range from the exhibitionist “Everyone” to the super-private “Customize” setting. Selecting “Customize” will bring up a pop-up of fine-tuned selections–it’s here where you can select to share certain information with friends only, specific networks, or even “Only Me”. There’s even an option to hide information from specific people.

Block Lists At the bottom of the page, there are links for Applications (which we’ll go into more in-depth on the next settings page) and Block Lists. If there are people that you want to completely block your profile from (in my case, embarrassing relatives), this is where you want to go once you know their name on Facebook. Pop in their Facebook name here, and not only will you never show up on a search in Facebook while they’re logged into their account, but they won’t be able to see your posts on mutual friends walls, you won’t appear as tagged in any photo they view, and you won’t even show up on the lists of mutual friends! I cannot recommend using this feature enough, especially when you’re concerned about your employer finding out about the things you get up to after hours!
Application Settings: You know all of those fun games, quizzes, and websites you’ve visited or used via Facebook or Facebook Connect? Well, they’re leaking a lot more information than you realize. Take the ACLU’s “What Do Quizzes Really Know About You” to see how much information leaked out when you found out how many Disney characters you can name.
Worried about those apps and quizzes now? Well, this is where you control them!

First, from the drop down box marked “Show:” select “Authorized” to see all of the applications you’ve authorized to see your data. 90% of the time, you’ll be shocked to realize who is seeing your information and how much access they have!Next to each application, there are important links for you to get familiar with.

Click on “Edit Settings” to see what information that application can access, click on “Profile” to see the application’s profile on Facebook, and finally click on “X” to get that “Which Team Am I?” quiz to stop viewing your information.

This is only a basic guide to privacy within Facebook, but it should be enough to help you staunch the bleeding of your personal information to the world at large.

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