Thanks for posting this! What I don’t understand is why Facebook won’t create a privacy setting that would allow you to approve or deny photo tags before they can appear on your profile.

I don’t mind having some of my tagged photos available to people, so I don’t necessarily want to make them completely private. But I just want the option to block a photo tag BEFORE someone tags a photo of me — not remove the tag after the fact, when people might have already seen a picture.

Great info. I already do most of this but I am going to check the one’s that I missed. Definitely going to send this to all my Facebook friends. It’s a must read.

Very useful. Knew only some of them!

Good tips. Found some useful info!

#0. Don’t use facebook. Works wonders, everything stays nice and secure.

This is what I’m looking for. For more privacy I would like to suggest that we can hide number of friend that I have. I don’t want my friend to see that. I also want function like block certain user to comment at my wall or pics or notes or posted item. I also want to see function to hide specific friend status. Its annoying when somebody keep update same status specifically if its related to promoting something.

Great job, Nick. This is definitely an area where many users need a lot of hand-holding. There’s a nice article in this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education about some of the problems academics run into when they don’t know and/or ignore customizing their privacy settings on FB. Check it out: http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i22/22a00104.htm

@Faizal: you can click the option button next to an item in your feed and select Less from to not get so many stories about them.

Thanks great tips!

Excellent information - even if you know it all it’s good to be reminded so you can check your account. Thanks for posting this - I have retweeted.

Even if people find you on google, they won’t have access to your facebook account unless you have set your profile on public, right?

Very helpful for Facebook users (but I’m a teenager, and thus a devout MySpacer).

Or, for the ultimate privacy, you could avoid facebook all together. In case you forgot, there was a guy named Alexander Bell over a century ago, invented the telephone. You might want to start using that. And snail mail still works. Plus, with that info, no matter what, a message can get through. As an additional, it is far harder for snoops to get access to the info, you cannot get fired for those communiques and you can prevent stupid pictures from getting out for the world to see.

Try it for a week, see what not using the sites can do for you.

I tried those social networking sites, and after less than an hour on each, I decided never to use them at all. Saved my job when my friends got fired cause of facebook and myspace.

Thanks for this, Nick!
I didn’t know how to make our contact info more private so this has helped a lot thanks. It’s weird how that isn’t in the privacy settings too :S lol.

Your post hit the spot! I just blogged on it thanking you for your guidance and direction to prevent FB havoc in our personal lives! Thanks again for your brilliant post!

-Mr. R
@mrich1911

Hey, thanks dude, this was useful!

Thank you for posting this!!! I didn’t know half the stuff in here.

Faisal, all those things can be done in Facebook. Number of friends hidden? #10 above. Block users? set up groups (#1 above) then allocated permissions. Hide friend’s status? move your arrow over their status and an OPTIONS box appears - click “less about”. They should disappear

Nick, I blogged about this, because one of our Australian newspapers (Murdochs news.com.au) grabbed provocative Facebook status updates and published them as “news”. I sent readers to this article as a tutorial on how “not to end up front page of Saturday’s newspaper”. So thank you

Facebook Privacy (hope linking works) if you want more info on what happened.

Thanks for the info - I was aware of most of those privacy settings but am glad you listed all 10 - I’m going straight to my page to make sure I’ve added them all! Cheers!

Thank you so much - what a great list!

most excellent! have forwarded to some friends already. thanks a lot!

This information will be put to great use by the many job seekers I work with. What seems friendly and fun during good times, can easily work against the professional suddenly looking for a job.

Thanks for listing all of these in such a clear and consise way.

Really helpful. One thing I’d wish to add : Facebook privacy settings differ, depending on which country you opened your account.
I’m in France and some of the settings you were suggesting were turned on automatically. Meaning that Facebook could make them standard settings, but that’s another story…

Great post, shared on Facebook

Thanks a lot for this information. I have been using facebook and i know its sometimes irritating when your privacy gets infringed. Certainly these would help. thanks again.

Hey, thanks for this. But the Public Search Listing checkbox does not exist on my privacy settings page… Huh? Any ideas as to why not? Much appreciated.

Fine! thank you.

just missed an instruction how to hide the visibility of the groups I’m in….

found it!

on: http://www.facebook.com/editapps.php?ref=mb
click on “settings” near ‘groups’

and find several settings to change…
(just using fb in another language, so designations may vary)

I use the friends lists to great effect, however one thing I would really REALLY like is a list of all friends NOT in a group. If I don;t remember to do this when I first connect up with a friend they can sometime languish in ‘no mans land’ and I’m never too sure what a person in this state can or can’t see…

Excellent post Nick. Dugg & stumbled.

So these are really important suggestions. So important that at the very least some of them should be default settings in FB. IMO, FB should have a pretty tough job defending the current default settings which as you put it have cost some people their jobs and relationships due to no fault of theirs.

Gracias Ricardo. Está super útil el artículo. Espero que sigas bien.

Beso!

Thanks for the tips - some new to me - but more importantly for reminding all of us that you can have fun with facebook without worry … going to share with this some of my reluctant clients

Ditto with all the guys who commented here. This IS a must read for all FB users, new and old.

Most importantly, I agree with Steven Jones’ comment. A “not in any list” list of friends would be awesome and facilitate the management of extensive friends/contacts lists…

cool article, shared on FB, and already some positive feedback because of it. Great job

i didnt know the Google one, thanks Nick, great stuff

This is great! I didn’t even know some of those settings existed. You explained it all very clearly. I’ll definitely pass this on to friends and to a coworker of mine who felt leery about adding our boss and other coworkers as friends. Thanks!

I’m also could not find the option to turn off the public search. Has facebook removed this?

Thanks for the information.

I tried to go in to hide myself from Google, but that option is not on that page for me. Any suggestions? Thanks!

Got some very good tips here. Unfortuneateley , on the internet , you have to protect yourself from hackers. Social networks are one place that they can find the information to hack you. or steal your ID.

Hi Nick, thx for lifting the lid on this. Very well explained!!!

This is great stuff. Thank you.

Great stuff.

RE: Friend Lists
So, friends lists are a fine idea, but Facebook’s application of the concept is cumbersome, at best.

What Facebook SHOULD provide is Drag & Drop function where we have a friends source list (photo, name, which of your friends list they currently exist within).

And a “drop zone” for each Friend List.

This way we could drag and drop friends and not have to bother with the current approach which is a combination of
a) start typing the name, and/or
b) pick n number of contacts from this impossibly long scrolling list.

Of course, methods for managing lists should also be developed. E.g., delete list/group, manage what the people in this list/group can see, etc.

The drag & drop approach would enable us to easily manage who appears in which list, but also offer a way to manage different permission levels.

Drag and Drop is the answer, Facebook.

Nick, this is an absolute coincidence! A group of my friends were actually wondering how effective FB privacy settings were after I put up some party pics. I had to assure them that I’d tagged my pic album as “Only Friends” & that others would not be able to view them. However, on further testing I discovered that the public URL that’s posted at the bottom of the page for others can enable folks outside of those I’d designated to view my photo album. I reported this obvious limitation to FB immediately. Does this then mean that Friends of Friends could see them as well? Would they be notified of their friends being tagged in FB albums via the News Feed?

FB privacy settings are quite extensive, but they have to work properly in order to place complete faith in them. The thoughtful feature that FB did support was the ability for tagged friends to “un-tag” themselves.

Your post is much needed especially when FB grows & folks from all times of your life start discovering you. I’ve also started feeling that I should pare my friends list down to those I’ve stayed in touch with over the years.

Additionally, FB could easily create automatic Friend groups that used your captured association data when one connected with someone. This would help users quickly apply the right privacy setting based on the groups they selected without having to actually go through the tedious task of organizing each of these connections.

Thank you… I have been keeping my facebook profile for close personal contacts only, whereas most of my friends add contacts left right and centre, I bet none of them know about any of these settings. I’ll pass on the info.

Liked this so much I posted it to FB and LinkedIn. Having encouraged so many of my friends and colleagues to join Facebook, I feel accountable for reminding them how to use it wisely. Thanks for sharing.

This is really great info. And would be even more useful if I could stay logged in to Facebook long enough to actually change any settings.

My Facebook privacy settings dont’ appear to work this way. The “customize” setting has two radio button choices:

Friends of Friends
Only Friends

With no “friend list” below it.

I can add the friend list below where it says “Except These People,” but it won’t really do what I want it to do. Nor does it work like the example you hav ein your e-book. Do I need to upgrade something?

Great timing! Thanks Nick for posting this.

I’m struggling with making affords to clean my page.
Least of all I want to know about status updates of my friends and to see all these “sorry to hear that” & “congrats”/hehe/. But, in general, FB is a great thing when u know why u r there.

Nick, I tried to find u, but it seems like min 3 pages of ppl with the same name on FB, lol. So, I ask u publicly:):) Can u plz, add me?
Thanks.
Inna

Great info!

Good F*cking post.

I use my Facebook for work and a friend of mine posted a damn link to LemonParty on my wall the other day and I guess when you do that a picture can be selected from the site to show a little bit about the link….well you get the idea. And from my email you can imagine that LemonParty would NOT be a good thing for people from work, especially Flight Directors, to see. HAHAHA.

Thanks for the insight!

Thanks for taking the time to post this Nick.

I have been venturing into various social websites lately but not FB yet.

Apart from their “Terms Of Use”, if I have read it right, of allowing them to use your content, which may have intellectual property (IP) rights, for their own advertising purposes while you are a member, these security issues you have raised are also a concern.

I have learnt in the past,
- from other peoples actions on chat forums that it is best not to upload anything onto the internet that you wouldn’t want the public to see and
- secondly, from some writer about deciding what to do in different situations and possibly common sense: Don’t do anything you would not want your mother to find out (or substitute another caring person you admire and respect or your boss). This may be a way to measure if your conscience is letting you know not to do a thing before any evidence is created and/or published. If this was the case, then maybe FB can remain a social tool without changing the default security settings too much.

Excellent post, Nick. I choose to have most of my privacy settings tweaked to show max info to all peeps.

However, I know that privacy is a major concern for lots of members. Like yourself, I helped my mom to be practically invisible on Facebook as she just connects with a few family members.

Cheers,
@marismith

Just remember guys… the f**king feds and pigs have access to everything on facebook, myspace, and every other social networking site out there. Private or not. They can get it. Don’t ever post or say anything on a social networking site that you wouldn’t say directly to a cops face.

There were a couple here I didn’t know about! Thanks for sharing this info!

Thanks for sharing - and a great post. Many people don’t know the dangers lurking online and even within Facebook.

Thank you so much, so many people are not aware of how much they put “out there”!!!

In regards to Number 4, I wish I could see the pictures from The Thievery Corporation Tour. Thievery Corporation is the shiznit. im going to see them in a couple weeks

this is really a great informations
thanks !!

Util para cuidar privacidad. pese a que esta en inglesse entiende

Yes, Nick, this is excellent information. I’m going to post this link to my Facebook profile. Hopefully, this will help educate some of my FB friends regarding privacy settings.

Thanks again,
@technet_sistah

Hey everyone,

I am confused about something….

If I post photo’s and make them “only friends” but “none of my networks” what does this mean? Who can view my photo’s then?

Thanks so much for your help!

-Facebook privacy fail?-

Great info, just one thing: I followed the steps to avoid my friends to see other friends of mine and it worked (when they look at my profile), but in their mainpage they still have in these “suggestions/people you may know” list my friends, saying they have me in common. So you can avoid your friends to see your list of friends, but they will know them anyway… I think it’s a big facebook hole, isn’t it?

My interpretation of this post can be summarized as, “Facebook privacy settings are too confusing for Facebook’s users.” This post would not exist if Facebook UX and docs were clear. It’s a shame, but if it were easy for users to control the use of their PII then Facebook would suffer. Facebook, quite simply, is incentivized to make their privacy settings confusing.

I emailed Facebook privacy support to explain that I don’t think reasonable people would think that “Use this to control who can see the full list of your friends on Facebook” means “(same) except for search results which ignore this setting.” Their response was to tell me that they looked at my privacy settings, and people could not see me in search results. I replied that they completely missed the point and that unless they had escalated the issue to their manager, I was shocked that they had read access rights to my settings. I no longer tell people that Facebook is trustworthy.

Fantastic, super helpful. I’m wondering if you have such a version in Spanish, not for me, but Facebook is big in Venezuela, and I’m sure my family and friends could use your advice. Please, let me know.

Sincerely,

Juan Carlos

if you would like your lives to be private, why facebook? facebook is a social website, somewhere where people would like to be seen. and then you hide? great logic..

Can I block the people you may know application?

Thank you for posting the article.
It is important about privacy settings we must notice. I think the barance between private and open is very important. We should know what imformation must hide and open.

Superb information. Started already making friends lists.

Great article, the more people that become aware of available privacy settings, the better.

The big one I would add to your list is blocking what applications your friends use can see - by default, much of what your friends can see about you can be seen by any application that they authorize (not which ones *you* authorize).

Especially if you have friends who are prone to click on every application that catches their eyes (surely I’m not the only one who has a few of those), but probably for even the most innocent apps, do the app creators really need to know all of my personal info from where I live to my relationship status to my religion? I think not! It’s under the privacy settings area, under applications settings.

This is all good info and I follow a lot of them but people need to really just be more responsible for their actions online before they run rampant with photos or messages they wish to be private.

Thanks for this article. It’s very very important what you write and no one care about it. Again thank you.

Some very useful information. It’s staggering how many people I know who have Facebook accounts that are wide open to anyone who cares to look for them. I think I’ll post this to they all.

Some useful tidbits for those who think they have already locked it right down too.

I think this information is great! Thank you. I would however like to suggest that an application is added to facebook that allows you to preview a piture tagged of you BEFORE it hits your profile. Although the picture may not be indecent, it may not be one that you would like shown to everyone who can view your page - and has logged on before you.

I agree with Steven Jones’ comment. A system managed “not in any list” list of friends would help greatly in managing the friend lists…

i don’t see the checkbox for removing myself from public search listings; would this just not be present if i already had set myself to only be visible to friends?

well most people on facebook are stupendous fgts so enjoy whatever bad luck befalls you

Bunch of fools, you realise your selling your identity to Facebook when you sign up, they own your data and you can never get it back, you can’t delete your profile so basically your giving away every single thing about yourself including where you like to socialise, where you work, your relationships with people, your likes, where you are. Facebook has the power to completely map out your life and how your connected to every person you know. Also the people who ploughed millions of pounds into a social networking website are very high powered political figures, you people should think about what your giving up when joining such a website I.E. freedom.

Wow, this is a great post! And excellent comments too.

Thanks for these tips! I’ve found them very useful!

I can stop people being able to comment or see comments on my wall but is there a way to stop people commenting on say when you become friends with someone or update your status?

i.e:

jb is now friends with ……… 12.07pm -comment

???

Thanks. I have now put some of these into practice. A lot of these features I didn’t even know about before.

why isnt disabling facebook beacon on there???? its the worst part of facebook, screw who knows who your friends are or not stop facebook from seeing what you do outside of facebook

Tip Number One is not, as it turns out, for organizing the friends you already have. It’s for bringing new friends in from the outside. Just a marketing technique.

There’s a couple here that should likely be turned on as well:

https://register.facebook.com/privacy/?view=platform&tab=other

There’s not too many Facebook Connect apps in the wild yet, but can’t hurt.

Beacon is the annoying one that will show what tickets you just bought on Fandango, or if you post to Livejournal, or other things you probably don’t want everyone to know about.

I’m updating as I read. Thanks

Its such a great information on how popular is facebook. Its also told us how irresponsible people or parties are making use of it for their own benefit. And of course to do smearing campaigns.Its also good when the users being educated on the proper use of facebook to disseminate information as well as to promote harmony and understanding among people of various nationalities.However we should be aware that people of dubious characters would also infiltrate in this largest social networkings to cause havoc and insecurity to the users especially the naive and teenage users.So facebook can be a two-edge knife, that should be handled properly.

Thanks for this information. I had no idea about all these settings and now I’ve changed them.

why on earth would people like to be on facebook anyway???

very usefel information. thank you!!! i’m a new user, but the potential invasion of privacy or anonymity is obvious, quick.

Thank you for the helpful advice!

I am wondering - is there a way to ‘untag’ yourself from a photo that has been mistakenly tagged, by someone else, as you?

I like facebook. I don’t think anybody else know me that well so they ignore me. But I am okay with it. I chat with a good friends that I really know.

It was increidible. Thanks for the TIPs.

Thanks for the tips. However, I was looking on how to change my profile picture without notifying everyone.

Thanks in advance!

Good article.
There’s two typos in it. LOL

Great Resource! Thanks for posting this article. An email has been doing the rounds which highlighted a BIG technical glitch on about photo and profile privacy that most people don’t even ‘know’ about! Can anyone please give a solution for this?

(1) First, in the ‘Privacy Settings under ‘Basic’,the first option asks who should be able to see your “Profile”. What exactly do they mean by “Profile”? As in, if you choose “Only friends” for this first question, then don’t all the other questions i.e. personal info, basic info, status updates, friend etc become moot and void! Because if ONLY your Friends can see your “Profile”, then what is the point in choosing privacy options for other things? For example, if you end up choosing “friends of friend” can see “my Status Updates” then how is it possible that “only friends” can see your “profile”…..but “friends of friends” can see your “Status Updates” . Right?

(2) Second: If I click a small thumbnail picture which appears in my mini-feeds as “My Friend Amy commented on Brad’s picture” or “My friend Amy was tagged in Brads’ picture” when Brad is neither my friend nor in my network…… then, I can not only see ‘that’ picture of Brad… but I can see his ‘whole’ personal album! Does this happen because Brad by mistake:

a) Forgot to uncheck the ‘All of facebook’ can see my album box? This is very cunning of FB to do this as by “default” this box is “Checked” and most people don’t even notice this!

OR is it because,

(b) Brad he checked the box “friends of friends” can see this album?

BUT if (b) above is true, then why can’t I go to Brad’s profile and see that album (since I am a friend of friend of Brad’s?). Apparently even though he checked “friend of friend” can see his album, BUT his general profile is hidden and visible only to friends, then WHY am I able to see his album?

Thanks to all in advance,
Betty

This is exactly what I was looking for on Facebook. I felt
a little exposed at times sharing my weird sense of humor. Some of the published resources help keep some privacy in your life. Check it out !

But I only have my friends and family on facebook and I NEVER accept anyone I don’t know. Is that okay?

sheena- they used to have that, I think it got to be too much work to approve or deny. you can always have it notify you whenever you’re tagged, and then untag yourself if you wish. the person can then not tag you again in that photo.

come on baby, come on

did you say correctly on #6 “uncheck… ‘Remove Relationship Status’”. or did you mean the opposite?

There are still major shortcomings in FB’s privacy controls, including… the lack of privacy settings for your networks, asymmetric read/write controls for your wall, lack of friend lists and exclusions for your profile, and lack of friend lists for your basic & personal info. Also, in order to simply reply to a Facebook message from a non-friend, you have to give “permission to view your list of friends, as well as your Basic, Work and Education info for one month.”

Is there a way to tag a whole friend list in a note, instead of having to type in each persons name one by one (inevitably forgetting someone)?

When a friend posts an inappropriate video or comment, I would like the option to delete it, not just “fewer or more” stories about this person - why can’t I just delete it? Am I missing something? Thanks!

One thing I couldn’t find was how to prevent an application from sending a news feed item announcing when you add the application. You can only change the settings after you add the application. Anyone know if this is doable?

I use facebook for work and for play - thank you so much for this helpful advice. It makes me feel a little safer in this world that makes it so easy for your personal information to spread virally!

Great job Nick! There is a lot of good information in that list.

Athena - On the news feed when you add an application,there is not a way to stop the very first news feed item. Facebook needs a Global setting in the account area to “disable all application news feeds by default”. You can however, go to your front page and delete the item yourself after exiting the application. I only let like a couple apps post news feeds.

It looks like you may have a different version of FB than I do… Any idea about this? Thanks!

Is there a way to only restrict one list of friends from seeing my comments on photos, links, videos, etc rather than just prevent any of these things from being on the “news feed” and “wall?”

thanks

You know, I’d like to ask everyone out there, especially those who are concerned about privacy and ask what kind of society you want to live in? I’d like to live in a world where people can know me and know me as a close friend might. That means they don’t just see the carefully filtered pre-approved pictures but also those where my head is in the toilet or the bong is to my lips. That includes my bosses and potential employers. We are rapidly approaching a day when you will be under surveillance 24/7 and there won’t be a whole hell of alot you can do about it. So instead of trying to invent an idealized version of yourself to meet “their” standards, I hope you realize we can turn the equation around and redefine “acceptable behavior” to mean behavior that we can achieve without the anxious wringing of hands and obsessive deletion of anything that might compromise your shitty job.

I am not registered in Facebook and I never have. However, I know that my name is tagged on pictures shared on Facebook by friends of mine…
What am I supposed to do to avoid that? Because, with no Facebook account, I can’t even know these pictures exist and my name is tagged, except if I’m told from outside.

Best article about facecrap. Ever.

If you want privacy then don’t use facebook it’s that simple…..

Incredibly important piece of advice to pay heed !

Great tips! We all need to be more conscious of our online privacy, especially on social networking sites like Facebook.

All excellent tips - I use most of these already on Facebook. And I think anyone who registers at ANY social networking site needs to have a basic knowledge of the privacy settings on that site before posting anything on it.

In regards to #9. Avoid Embarrassing Wall Posts, upon examining the wall post configurations within in a profile page (accessed via the Settings icon) and Profile Privacy setting page (Wall Posts section), I am uncertain that these two preferences address different Wall post customizations. The tip states that the first preference allows you to configure who can see posts made by friends, and that the second preference allows you to configure who can post to your Wall. If you click on the Help question mark by the Wall Post section of the Profile Privacy setting page, however, the dialogue box states:

“Use this control to decide who, upon reaching your profile, can see posts on your Wall made by your friends.”

If this is accurate, then both sets of preferences perform the same function—configuring who can see posts made on your Wall. If this is correct, then there doesn’t seem to be a way to set permissions for who can post to your Wall beyond the all or nothing checkbox in both preferences.

Can Nick O’Neill or a reader verify this?

This is great — all facebook users should be aware of these.

One thing you didn’t mention in the application section, though, is that you don’t need to scan your profile every time you use/visit an app… just after the first time you’ve added it. After you’ve added it, you can go to your application settings page and say the application is not allowed to post things in your news feed. A commenter above was right, though, there does not seem to be a way to to prevent it before you add the app.

i know that Excepting = exclude, not counting.
But I’m SO SO SO confused.

So in a situation, say for setting who can see my list of FRIENDS,…

For “Who can see this”, I choose “ONLY FRIENDS”
and then have people in my “EXCEPT THESE PEOPLE”, the people in the excluded group CAN or CANNOT see my Friends list??

If I choose “NO ONE” can see my… say WALLPOSTS.
Are the people in the “EXCEPT THESE PEOPLE” list ABLE or NOT ABLE to see my wallpost?

Wouldn’t it just be easier if it was clearer “who CAN see this information” and “who CAN NOT see this information”. or is it just me?!

I rather they had thought first and foremost about our privacy first… I mean, the users keep the phenomena going. I’m glad they were able to implement these settings, so for that, thank you!
Thanks for the info also!

Nice post! Can you also let us know how we can disable people(that arent on our friend list) viewing our profile after replying to a message they ve sent?

Thanks for the list. I knew most of these, but hadn’t realized you could make multiple friends lists with different privacy settings. I might start to use facebook more now.

Thanks again!

Would be cool if now I just could believe that there is any privacy at facebook.

How can I change my privacy settings so that when I add someone as a friend, and the friend request is still pending, that person will not be able to view my profile and “You must be friends with (my name) to see her full profile” will come up when they try to click on my name while the friend request is still pending?

very very nice article, Nick!

this is a great post, I’m going to look into my account asap

Great post, Nick. Thanks for doing us all a favor.

I Guess: Don’t Use Facebook in the first place was intentionally fogotten as an advice, wasn’t ist?

Regarding the Google thing–
First, do a search on Google and find yourself –I used my name and region. You may need to keep narrowing the parameters, but your FB page is there on Google! and then you can edit from there–it takes you right to the search privacy page in FB.
I couldn’t find the same page from within FB.

One other thing to note about privacy on Facebook is that if Facebook adds a new Privacy setting it is alway turned off. So you must go in an activate it.

In Canada this is basically like negative sales. You sign up for a product like a Cell / Mobile Phone and unless you uncheck all the options you end up paying for the highest plan.

This was made illegal a few years back because the banks and mobile phone companies etc were making a killing by selling options to un savvy customers who didn’t know enough to opt out of the services.

So you should go back and check all your settings everynow an then on Facebook to make sure they haven’t changed something so that it is now visible when you thought it wasn’t.

Excellent. Thanks for sharing this.

this is awesome. super helpful.

I don’t know how workable an idea this is, but could you have two separate accounts for personal friends and professional contacts? Using separate email accounts it’s presumably do-able.

Fantastic list of things to do to keep it private. Definitely well worth the read. Thanks for posting this.

I am one of the several people posting here whose version of FB privacy settings has no mention of public search listings (tip 3). I am in France, is this anything to do with it?

I am also interested in the fact you can have different groups of friends. If you make different groups can the members of each group only see in your pofile the other friends from that group?

good points, thanks for the article.
still, here’s an excerpt from Facebook’s terms, chapter “Licenses. I’m sure you’ve all read it

You are solely responsible for the User Content that you Post on or through the Facebook Service. You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof. You represent and warrant that you have all rights and permissions to grant the foregoing licenses.

Looks like I have some work to do, privacy-wise!

I think it should have been 11 things. I like to turn it up to 11.

Unlike the author, I keep my professional and social networking separate: Linkedin and Facebook, respectively.

It seems like “privacy” is not the only thing some people want to control. Rather, we consider Facebook a public presentation of our identity, and we want to look good for the same reason we want to dress well. Maybe we want to be more playful with our friends, but we don’t want them picking out our wardrobes!

But we sort of do, so how can you control it, have it both ways? I was a little horrified by my own vanity reading about the setting “allow only THESE friends to post to your wall,” thinking, ha I could use that on some people. But it feels awful to be on the other end of that. When someone starts expurgating my posts, I’m not so much upset at being deleted as “you were just wearing my friendship like clothing from the beginning. ick.”

Secondly, in facebook-privacy-world, the right to see something is often separate from the right to search for it. I don’t like this because if someone untags a photo, and you see it anyway, you get accused of “stalking” them because they are like “OMG how did you FIND it?!” First, what made you think I was looking for it? The answer is probably “because I *know* you’re interested in me.” Well in that case, what an awful word for expressing interest in your friends!

For a second example, most younger users set all their album privacy to Everyone, Networks, or Friends-of-Friends. They have to. I think a more restrictive setting breaks the social process for which they use facebook, because they often go to events with people they’re not facebook-friends with, and after the event they want to (1) see ALL the pictures, (2) request new friends by looking at the photo tags. if you are not friends with a photo album’s owner, those settings mean you can still see photos of your friends tagged in there, and once you can see a photo of one friend you can see the rest of the album, too. This way, facebook actually functions like a, well, facebook, putting you in touch with people you remember seeing. If you want the result, it’s “awesome, i love facebook,” and if you don’t, whoever did exactly the same thing is “stalking” you.

so, my plea is that everyone learn how to use the privacy settings and stop expecting to have their minds read or for everyone else to use facebook in the same limited way of which they’re capable. If you want to call someone who knowingly expresses unwanted interest in you a stalker, DO IT, those people are rude! but trying to stygmatize people who know how to use facebook because you don’t, or you would just rather blame them than try to learn because it’s so much easier, ought to make everyone perceive you as lazy ignorant and unwilling to accept responsibility, as well as rather unkind!

Thirdly, that said it’s actually hard to see what the news feed you’re spewing looks like. You can break the rules, make a second profile, set it to Unsearchable, and friend your main profile—then you can login to the second profile to see the news you’re spewing. but I think it’s against the rules. and remember even if it were possible to delete things from a news feed after they happen (like how it’s possible to delete them from your wall), which it *isn’t*, it’d be meaningless anyway because you can get an email copy of some parts of the news feed, and email can’t be deleted after it’s sent because email is part of the Old Internet, before women started using it, and “no deleting” is how the patriarchy saw fit to design it.

anyway, please take responsibility for your own privacy, or Presentation, or whatever you are trying to accomplish, and don’t blame the people looking at you for what you wore—that’s my request.

This FB newbie thanks you…!

Also, tagged photos still show up in the news feed… would love to see that functionality fixed….

Great page, thanks for this - I’ll point some of my more paranoid friends in its direction.

One more point though ,that wasn’t covered. I haven’t read all the comments, so apologies if someone has already brought this up: Applications that seem harmless can act as data miners and, as I understand it, can access your friends details as well.

So, while I may not have chosen to add the “Send underwater lovehearts” application, it can nevertheless access certain aspects of my information.

This can be remedied by blocking your information in the settings described in the post or by blocking the application entirely. The latter also means if other friends invite you to the application (and I’ve had over a dozen invites for the same application in one day before) you don’t get the same invites popping up again and again and again.

Thanks!

Public search listing option is not available… please let us know how do not appear anymore on Google !!!
thks

In tip #6 you mention changing the privacy setting for your “Basic info.” I would like to hide my relationship status from everyone except for close friends — which I have all in one “friend group.” However, not only is there no way to only control the setting for relationship status.. there is also no option under the “basic info” category to allow only “some friends” access to your basic info.

Most other categories have a “some friends” option. I guess it’s because “basic info” seems like an essential category that you shouldn’t want to block too many people from. Instead of being able to choose the select few you want to be able to see it; instead you have to single out those people who you con’t want to see it.. it allows you to block people one by one .. but doesn’t give you the option to block everybody.

PS If you are wondering why I don’t just delete my relationship status, it’s because I don’t want to hurt my boyfriend’s feelings. He’s the one who intiaited putting our relationship status up there.. I feel like it would be rude to delete it. But I don’t feel that my business associates and other essential strangers need to know about my relationships.

very necessary. I’ll be changing some setting right away.

Nice summary of available settings!
note: Your section ‘Control Who Can Post to Your Wall’ isn’t entirely correct though — you can prevent everyone from posting, but not individual friends it seems. You can hide your wall from individuals but not simply make it “read only” for specific friends.

Thank you very much for writing and posting this resource. However, I hope that readers do not think that this presents every conceivable way that your privacy can be compromised on facebook.

One point you do NOT mention is one that caught me unaware recently:

Anytime you interact with a “random” non-friend (for example, a friend of a friend whose posted photo of your friend you comment on, or a wannabe friend whose friend invite you reply to with “Sorry, you must have me confused with…”), you are basically giving the “random” permission to view your profile **as if they were your friend** for 30 days! A random non-friend whose note I had commented on started commenting on my photos. Creepy!

Who cares about their facebook page need to visit psychoanalyst He will help them to fix their problems in life :)))

I like it!

Awesome tips, thanks.

Fantastic post, thanks for listing all these helpful tips. Most of what you have noted, I had already done…but am now tweeting and sharing with friends as a reminder to them as well. The other thing I have “turned off”, for the most part, are those silly apps!

I don’t have the “Create a public search listing” option available to me either, as some others mentioned. I remember that option though, and remember that I had mine unchecked. I also unchecked that option when setting up privacy features for someone else’s account. Neither of our names nor Facebook listings come up when I type our respective names into Google. My guess is, it worked for us. Don’t know what to tell the people who can’t find this listed for them, though. Maybe Facebook got rid of it, or placed it somewhere else? (If we’re going to advocate that FB do something, let’s make the next campaign about putting all relevant privacy/account/search/profile, etc. settings in one place, instead of making us all jump through hoops to try to figure this out. It can be very daunting for the newly-initiated FB user.)

The Google search checkboxwas here a month ago, but it has recently disappeared, and I can’t seem to block Google from indexing my page… Does anyone have a solution to this problem?

Does anyone know how to be hidden as being online? I don’t want people to know that I am online when I am. yes, i am on a social site, and don’t want to be social ha ha.

dumb advice coming from a teen..
disabling all this stuff makes it boring
we live for embarssing pictures from the weekend before or secretly chaning friends statuses.

@Juan Carlos e hispanohablantes: Preparé una versión en español.
Hello there!! I prepared a spanish equivalent, for the record:
http://tecnologiaslibres.net/2009/02/18/configuracion-de-privacidad-en-facebook-lo-que-no-conocias/
I hope you like it!
Greetings from Mexico!

Thanks for this info. I had pictures of a friend’s child I wanted to share with them and others that were there when they were taken who are also on FB, but knew the parents didn’t like all and sundry seeing photos of their baby. I used the privacy settings for photos and it was brilliant and would use it again. Handy to have these hints and tips provided, as sometimes we don’t have the time to figure it out but want extra security and privacy and just use Facebook to keep in touch with real friends and socialise with them! For others they can ignore it and be humiliated without their knowing it! We can all make the choice, and that’s what I like.

Tick, tick and tick. Proud to say I did all this before this article has been published =)

thankyou .. very informative tips ..were a few settns had to change.. glad to know of these saftey tips.

Wow…seriously? Turning off the sharing functions with friends on Facebook? Really? Geeze…get over yourself:
1) Most people are NOT into you…because you’re *gasp* just not that special.

2) People who do care, will pay attention, and Facebook is simply a communications tool to enable that. If you’re trying to hide, then what the heck are you doing on Facebook in the first place?

3) If you’re foolish-enough to think privacy still exists, then you obviously have no idea the extent of personal information which exists in public records…nor the ease at which many other semi-private records are accessed daily.

4) If you’re doing something that’ll end a meaningful long-term relationship, or end a job, have you ever considered…umm…not doing it?! Seriously…how difficult is that concept?

5) For those in that category consisting of some fraction of 1%, whom have been stalked, raped, or otherwise attacked, injured, or even killed through online-linked info/activity. You (they) have my sympathy; I’ve been on the receiving end of some pretty terrible abuse myself. While none was linked with online activity…it sucks just as much… Though, I’m not allowing an individual’s screwed-up sense of morality to control my life, or my decisions…and they know it… Stop living in fear.

A useful setting for more serious privacy matters that didn’t get mentioned is the “Block List”. I didn’t know about many of these security measures, this is a great post, but Block List works well to prevent specific people from finding you. People can regularly send you messages even after you have unfriended them, but putting them on the Block List, in Privacy Settings, makes you unfindable for them on facebook- you do not exist. You just type their name in a box. Simpler than hiding from everyone, good for avoiding harassment.

Beware that if you add Facebook Mobile to your profile, your mobile phone address is automatically published in your contact information.
I wasn’t aware of this until a couple of friends mentioned it to me. Not only did it appear on my contact info, it was also part of the news feed on my profile page. I have since removed both- one by modifying a privacy setting, the other I had to manually delete.

agreed that Facebook has removed the option to remove ourselves from google search.

i joined facebook right around new year’s day 2009, and i have never seen the option. just looked for it and cannot find it anywhere.

and i can find myself all quick like with a google search. it goes to a page that says my name and has the default non-picture facebook avatar and no further information.

looks like facebook wants to advertise itself with our presence and thinks it can do so no matter what we think, i.e., “joe blow is on facebook!” they are going to say through the google regardless of our wishes.

As I tried to implement #10 Keep Your Friendships Private, I could not find an obvious way to prevent friends from seeing other friends. So I created a Friend List called “all friends added” and changed the setting for “Friends” on the “Profile Privacy” page to Customize it to “Only Friends” Except These People: “all friends added” which I hope does the trick.

I tried to do #3, yet when I go to search privacy settings page, I cannot find any “public search list”.
Why is this?

Isn’t the point of Facebook social networking. What good does it do to make everything private. Yes, I do keep a lot of my stuff private but some of the stuff is OK: silly pictures and wall posts, etc., etc.

That option is only visible when you have set your ’search visibility’ to ‘everyone’. With lower visibility there is no public listing in search engines.

Already did that as soon as I joined!

Another good tip (sorry if it’s been posted already) is:

Settings/Privacy Settings/Profile

“See how a friend sees your profile (Start Typing a Friend’s Name)”

There is another way to protect against unwanted application notification. (#7)

you just have to go to : http://www.facebook.com/editapps.php

then click on “edit settings” and a box will pop out.
all you gotta do is change the wall settings to “never publish any stories from .. ”

hope that’s useful.

I´m thinking about deleting my account… but it´s become a catch-22 situation. Why? I´d like to be free of the whole thing, which I now only use to keep in touch with friends and dislike the whole curtain-twitching element of it, but I am reluctant to sign off completely as I would like to know how I´m being represented online amongst all my acquaintances (photos uploaded, comments, etc). All those who´ve already posted DO have a facebook presence, even if they don´t sign in and see it. You know that party you went to last weekend? Those photos your friend took are likely on facebook already!

thanks a lot for these very useful tips, that’s just what i’ve been looking for!

well, if you are loooking for privacy, you don’t need facebook…

Great post, I’ll share it on my profile right away!

Regarding the multiple friends lists. If you have the same person on two or more lists and have different privacy settings for the various friends lists, does FB keep the settings separately? For example, say you have your wife on both the Family friends list and a Church friends list. If you wish to have a more inclusive amount of information on the Family list, does putting your wife on both lists open up the more inclusive set of information to the members of the Church list?

What a great help! Thanks for all the tips. I don have a question for you:

If I deleted someone off of my friend list, do I automatically come off of that person’s list? If not, is there a way that I can get myself off of someone’s friend list?

How about creating a Friend List where the people on the list are not allowed to see posts from the other people in the same list. An example would maybe be a list of girls you are dating, or maybe competing clients. That seems like a pretty useful feature.

I couldn’t find tip #3 on my Privacy page either, but after fiddling around a bit, I discovered that it only shows up when you allow everyone to search you.

Great Article! Those tips are very helpful.

It’s true though, even if you don’t use facebook your privacy is at risk: many people have no discretion over the pictures they post or who is in them. I’ve heard stories of non-facebook users being “caught out” by users who saw them in other people’s pictures. The best way to avoid embarrassing disclosures is simply to avoid the situation in the first place.

Thanks for the tips, great resource.

dude!! dat foto tagging feature has to be known by a lot of pepl, coz many dunno bout it…and they post their bikini clad pics for their frens and once tagged they are appearing all over their frens lists…and then they are jumping around in panik saying how come dat so n so fellow has my pic…hahahaha CLASSIC

Great post Nick! I have shared on my FB page, hopefully people read it. I think people tend to get to comfortable with facebook and other networking sites and post way too much info or pics not realizing everyone can see it. Glad to know there are several ways to customize the privacy settings.

And in response to jb’s post on 2/5 — you can remove the “you became friends with…” by going to Privacy settings, News feed and wall, and uncheck the “Add a friend” box.

Wow, that’s a great message you got their man.

How timely as I searched my name on google last night. I was shocked at the results list, which showed many things I commented on in Facebook. After reading this article I double checked my privacy settings and to my surprise the box for allowing for google searches is NOT checked. Now what???

OMFG my internet content isn’t safe, ANYONE CAN READ IT!?!?! What the hell. Honestly, please don’t breed if this surprises you. This is SOCIAL NETWORKING it is supposed to be information about you - if you don’t want to share it, the DON’T JOIN. If you are bothered that those photos of you being a little drunk at the party will get out here are your options:
1) Don’t get drunk at parties.
2) Un-invent cameras (impossible).
If you got fired because your boss saw you in a picture on FB you need to SUE HIM. That is INLAWFUL and has nothing to do with privacy.

I haven’t read through all the comments, so if someone’s already mentioned this I apologize: Being able to control your privacy to such degrees is great — but my problem is when people act like you HAVE to limit your exposure. For example, you might friend somebody and they complain that they are seeing all your status updates, pictures, application news feeds, etc. and suggest that you adjust your settings so that they (and everyone else, they claim) don’t have to be bothered by your trivial life details. But privacy settings are for the USER, not for the convenience of the user’s friends or networks. If someone is not interested in seeing a bunch of frivolous news feeds, THEY need to adjust their news feed settings so that they don’t have to see thing they don’t want to see.

I can’t find the link for the photo privacy settings… where is it? Thanks!

Thanks for the info! I’m going to use all these tips.

What bugs me is that someone can just randomly take a pic of you, and stick it on thier facebook. This guy I had just met sent me a friend request, and I accepted. The next day, a tagged pic of me popped up that he apparentally took with his phone without me knowing. I had just met him that night….creepy! The pic wasn’t inappropriate, but it was VERY unflattering. I deleted the tag so at least people who I haven’t seen since high school that are on my friend list wouldn’t see such a gross pic of me!

What still bothers me though, is that pic is still on his profile and there is nothing I can do about that. I think its sick that someone can “sneak” a pic of you and then just post it on their site. If I were not on Facebook, I never would have even known he took a pic of me. Now at least I know to stay away from where the creepy guy with the camera is……ugh!

I agree that a lot of this should be activated by default. In lieu of that, there should be a tiered system of friending someone. You should be able to assign levels of access to people when you approve them. “Confirm as friend” “Confirm as acquaintance” “Confirm as co-worker” “Confirm as relative,” etc. There would be a different level of privacy with each and you’d be able to apply them on an individual basis at the click of one button. (To keep everyone egos soothed, no matter which you choose the news feed would still read “X is now friends with Y.”

Thanks for the information! This is a really comprehensive listing of the most important settings that we need to pay attention to if we value our privacy on Facebook. You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to make it seem easy and I, for one, am very grateful to you. Thanks a lot!

Scuttlebutt has it that several teen-age “aides” at our local nursing home were dismissed because they left potentially libelous comments about co-workers and comments about persons in their care that violated the provisions of HIPA (personal health information privacy law) on MySpace. The same kind of thing can happen with any social networking site. I keep my Facebook activity limited to immediate family.

I’m a little confused by the whole networks thing.
If I choose that none of my networks can, let’s say, see pictures tagged of me does that mean that none of my friends in that network can see them? Or does it just mean that people in my network that I’m not friends with can’t see them? Other than that, these tips were great. Honestly, I had done all of these things about two weeks before I read this, but it’s good for everyone to know.

just an fyi - not sure if he covered it, as this is a long article and I just skimmed it.. but there is a privacy feature to control overall privacy of the entire photo album section and fb and there is a privacy control feature for each photo album.

Also, every application has it’s own privacy control - For example, if you want Friend A to see your bumper stickers but not CoWorker B, then you can prevent CoWorker B from seeing it, as well as any other application or ‘box’ you have on your page.

In respose to Hannah above: “No Networks” means people in your network that you are NOT friends with cannot see the pictures. If you want to limit it further you will have to put certain friends from the network in their own group and then block them

Thanks for the detailed guide to Facebook privacy. While most of these settings are obvious thru a quick browse of the privacy settings page, I hadn’t thought about making separate friend’s lists and assigning different privacy settings to each of them.

I have a question…I recently added the My Girls application and accidentally added a friend to my list unintentionally. Now I can’t figure out how to take her off the list. Is there a way?

The public search only shows up if under search availability, you have it set to everyone. Otherwise, the option is not there.

I don’t like it that if a friend comments on a picture of mine, all of their friends can now see my pictures. Any way to change this?

Thanks Barbara. Great info to have!

This seems somewhat paranoid to me. Do you really have that much to hide (and is your information in that much demand)? I find some use for two or three of these tips. The others might be useful if I were either a secret agent or having multiple affairs.

If you’re unsearchable in facebook, you’re unsearchable in google. Make yourself unsearchable then google your name + facebook and see that your page doesn’t come up in the search results.

Hey if I block someone can they see me if they are still in my same network??

can you please send me the facebook privacy e-book.
thank you

dooh.. why this tips came so late?

@youareallretards:

1) “if you don’t want to share it, the DON’T JOIN” - actually, not true and that´s the problem (see my previous comment)

2) Why should you have to moderate your (perfectly legal) behaviour like having a drink with friends or hanging out with the people you want to just because of the potential privacy issues of a big-business social networking site? Sorry, is your life lived primarily via the internet or in your body??

3) In the case of your boss firing you for the reason that he saw a picture of you drunk at a party, then, yes, maybe you could sue him. However, in the likely event that he doesn´t specify that as the reason when firing you, then I guess you can´t…

4) It´s unlawful.

is there a way of blocking somebodies access to my info, but still allows me to see their status etc. ie. if i block this person, and they become friends with my partner- i still want to be able to see that. at present only my friends can view my profile. Is this suffiecient to keep this person from being able to view my friends, but still allow me to see if she becomes friends with any of my friends?

Thanks for the tip. Note: Mac’s user interface is so ugly/gray… what’s all the hype about??

This FB thanks you too. Great article.

Mike, since you’re posting your artwork and writings on facebook now, you might want to read this long article. A journalist friend of mine who knows a lot about internet security suggested to me that I should be aware of this.

I think that would be very helpful to a lot of people.

I have a question. On number 9, “Avoid Embarrassing Wall Posts”, both options, whether I set it in my profile wall setting or profile privacy setting, if I exclude a person, then that person can neither see any walls posts nor write on my wall. I was hoping if anybody can tell me if there was a way to stop someone from seeing wall posts made by others but still be able to write to my wall? It’s really important.

Christine, thank you so much for sharing this valuable information! As a “Facebook newbie,” I find it helpful to know some ways to protect myself.

I can always count on you for good advice!

Shari

thanks I learned a lot. Great tutorial.

Thank you. Very helpful article.

Thanks for the information, I learned a lot and put use some of the settings immediately.

The first word “everyday” should be “every day”. “Everyday” is an adjective used to describe things occuring commonly. It made me wonder about the validity of the entire article.

Great read, there is good info here to digest and with this insightfull information, it makes one rethink their ’social tree’ on FB and how to manage it. I am however, still at a loss in my search for that security setting to make me anon while on FB if I so choose. It seems when I get on there to send some emails or updates, I get swamped by people who want to chat me up. It would be helpful to have a button to make my status anon once in a while while I try to get some stuff done. Good article though - Thank you!

Great read, there is good info here to digest and with this insightful information, it makes one rethink their ’social tree’ on FB and how to manage it. I am however, still at a loss in my search for that security setting to make me anon while on FB if I so choose. It seems when I get on there to send some emails or updates, I get swamped by people who want to chat me up. It would be helpful to have a button to make my status anon once in a while while I try to get some stuff done. Good article though - Thank you!

OK - so after a bit more searching, I found a button that will list you as “offline.” click it, and it’s done. nice! Thank you again!

if you block someone from your facebook, is it possible that they can ever become friends with you again?

“Everyday I receive an email from somebody about how their account was hacked”

“Somebody” is singular, so it should read how his or her account, not their account.

I’m surprised at the sheer number of people who write for a living who can’t get this right.

Can you alter the settings to allow ONLY those you select to see the one or two [incriminating] photos within an album? Or are you only allowed to adjust the settings for the album in it’s entirety?

TIA!

What happens when Facebook staff violate the privacy rules and FB won’t respond?

Thanks for all that info - must useful! One thing I’m having a major stress about is my friends newsfeeds about my events. I don’t want events I’m attending to appear on my friends newsfeeds but I cannot find a way to prevent this from happening. I don’t have events I’m attending showing on my wall so it’s kinda obvious I also don’t want these events showing on my friends news feeds! Any help or info greatly appreciated!

I want to hide my friends’ list from ALL muy friends, how can I do this?

Hi Nick, This has been so useful!! One other thing that I want to know is whether it is possible to control the visibility of the groups you belong to? Thanks Hilary

Brazillian Wax?? NICE!!

omg this is so safety i can untagged myself from a photo this is so boring!!

this is so kool!!!

Two more things that could be done.
The first one, might be of interest to your Mom, Nick.

1. At the very bottom right hand corner is a silhouette of a little man with a coloured dot beside it. Click on it to make it red and it hides the fact that you are online making you appear as offline. Green shows you are online.

2. On your ‘Home’ page in the ‘News Ffeed’ section going to the very bottom there’s a note saying ‘Options for News Feed’. Click on that and it displays sliders that you can drag to control the amount of news feeds that you receive from your different friends.

Learning new things everyday!

I accepted an invitation to be someone’s friend and after doing so realized I don’t really know her well enought be friends. How do I deleter her?
Thanks.

hey, this website is very useful now i know how to be secure:)

I hate your website so much because the real facebook is much better because is not private and because i hate you so much bye … your so hot

Thank you! I already use these, but especially love the Friend List feature. This is most useful for my determining what information is displayed to a business contact, a real friend, or to the lurker snooping for information.

HELP! I went into the privacy settings to make it so people can’t find me in search engine searches and the box this article says to uncheck is not there….or I can’t find it. Does anyone know what to do or where to go? Thanks

Hi,

If someone tags a photo of me from their album into my facebook, is there a way I can stop my friends from clicking on the album link on the bottom right hand corner to see all teh photos?

I do not mind my friends seeing the tagged photos on my own facebook but not all photos in the album

Can you stop the whole album being opened by your friends

These is so usefell. Thanx you

Thanx you a gayn

Can is block certain people/groups of freinds from seeing groups and fan pages I belong?

BTW, love your site.

thanks-

MH

oops: can I block

For number 10 (regarding the privacy for list of friends). I found out that when you send a message or reply to someone who isn’t your ‘friend’, they actually can see your list of friends. That defeats the purpose of having it private.

Thank you for this information.

Great tips. I was not aware of most of those settings.

If I have myself blocked from search results, can my friend’s friends still see me in their friend lists?

I have every privacy setting on the most private secure setting. And Facebook does not even have my real name in my account. Still I would like to know if I am visible on others’ friend lists if I have blocked myself from search.

Does anyone know? Much appreciated.

-J

Like others have said, FB, MySpace, Twitter, etc., create privacy concerns and are a waste of time. Spend real time with the real people in your life. Really, what a self-important lot we’ve become. Most don’t care what you are doing. For those that do, how about actually communicating via phone or in person? Now there’s a revolutionary idea! I don’t see these services as bringing people together. They are actually more a way to keep people at a distance. Think about it.

and that, kids, is how u turn off stalker mode on facebook XD

hi,
any ideas how to block someone who has already blocked you - I don’t want him to be able to search me - but as he has blocked me his name doesn’t come up in the search list when you are on the block user page. This seems like a real oversight.

thanks
Julia

hello
thks for the great info =)
How can I turn off my wall privacy settings, so that only I can post and SEE it?
How can I make it so that even my friends cant see my wall when they go to my profile?
thks

Really all of those settings are irrellavant with the Facebook Private Profile Viewer I found it on stumble upon and it looks spam but it works

Is there any way to make the profile pics accessible to some and not to others?

Thank you.

hmm facebook

Thank you. Wonderful advisory to Facebook members.

It’s all been said, but did want to give my kudos on a terrific post.

I did think I knew how to manage my settings but had no idea I could edit my friends lists so as to control some of the flow of info and photos. Thank you! Well done.

how can you hide the Number of friends you have so that number does not appear on your page? Or so only you can see that number?

Is it possible to do a dating search on Facebook like one you could do on Match.com? For example only search women in San Diego, CA who are between 24 and 30 and are listed as single.

Thanks-

Some one PLEASE help me! I performed a function on my facebook that has messed up my pictures. I was trying to figure out a way to block certain photos from being viewed (photos I’d been tagged in, it’s nice to finally know how!), and now my photos seem to be randomly blocked from view. This occurs in my tagged photos, my photo albums and other peoples photos that I try to view on their sites. It seems quite random and it drives me nuts! I can view all photos on my facebook on other computers. It just seems to be affecting my computer alone. I don’t know how to fix it and it is really disheartening. Here is the function that has ruined my facebook life!

-I right clicked on a photo that I had been tagged in on my facebook.
-scrolled down and clicked
Block Images from photos-d.ll.fac…

Now my pics are all messed up and I am no computer whiz. Please help. I want to see photos of me, my family, and my friends!

Shelby

Thanksssss so much 4 this… this post is d only reason I decided 2 join Facebook after a year of de-activating it because it was not private enough….

Excuse me for thinking reasonably, but I don’t understand why on earth anyone would want to use such an intrusive system that is more likely to have detrimental effects in your life if you miss out one tick on one of the thousands little things that pop on your screen? Looks like you need a manual to make safe use of that network and again you may always miss something!

What’s wrong in using a less intruding network or none at all? We are totally unaware that we becoming pray of the few and some of us love it and ask for more. Its pathetic to say the least.

Is there still not a way to manage Friend Groups? I want to be able to limit what certain groups can see and which groups of friends other groups of friends can see. I don’t care for the intermingling of family members with friends, or friends with biz contacts.

Thanks!

Great post. I recently wrote something about Facebook’s privacy settings for a few friends that were having issues. There’s a lot that can be done with Facebook that most people just don’t seem to notice. Well done, enjoyed the read.

Where’s the damn Requests button?

Facebook’s default privacy settings pathetically remain in the dark ages when the only people on Facebook were college students who all knew one another, kind of. The point being, Facebook’s default privacy settings are frighteningly lax and totally inappropriate for the internet age of social networking. Bare in mind, this thing is being run by a kid who thinks he’s managing a virtual country populated by virtual citizens in a video game. It’s time for the Facebook world of account holders, you/us/them to demand that Mark Zukerberg and his kid development team wake up restructure the site’s default privacy settings to “show nothing to no one” and restructure site’s convoluted lack of transparency to the privacy control settings so that the only information that shows to anyone is only what the account holder has explicitly allowed! Would you like me to post some links to some popular celebrities friend lists? None of whom I’m sure are even aware that a list of all their personal friends are currently being published ALL OVER THE GLOBE.

I only read about 50 of these so not sure if anyone addressed this, but: Is there any way to keep your “friends” from knowing when you are on Facebook? (Down at the bottom right hand corner where it lists how many of your friends are online and then tells you who.) I don’t necessarily want everyone to know when I am online and have even had people make comments about the frequency and what time of day I was on FB. Also when I am trying to post, people cut in on you to “chat”.

Hi!!!!!!!

Stephanie, click on the green circle at the bottom right of your screen, and there’s an option called “go offline”…click that, and you will be invisible.

Thanks.

This is a FANTASTIC article. I really needed to separate what my coworkers see vs what my friends see. Also, I needed to remove some viewing ability from a few friends that like to give unwanted opinions on everything. Especially about relationships. Thanks SO MUCH for taking the time to write such a detailed and helpful article.

Great article though I already figured out all the above the other night on my own, would’ve been helpful had I seen this post first. Either way, this is yet another reason why I am not a fan of Facebook.

I prefer Myspace for more reason than one but security concerns have always been an issue of mine with Facebook. I got family members who are uploading pictures of me when I was a wee-one, which I don’t mind if strangers see but when those pictures are posted on my profile for anyone to see… That bothers me. Additionally, RSVPing to Events, I don’t need everyone to know what I’m doing and I have yet to figure out how to disable that.

All in all, Facebook is lame and it’s now no fun at all. I had to disable Wall Posts and the photo tagging and can’t RSVP to events as I don’t need everyone I know knowing my life.

Necesito hacer la siguiente pregunta… me llegan muchos correos o mensajes a mi bandeja de entrada de mi facebook de una persona muy extraña que me insulta y agrede, mi pregunta es: Como puedo hacer para que no me lleguen estos mensajes si no lo tengo como amigo en facebook?.
Por favor ayudenme

I’m not crazy about having the world, or even my friends see the actual ‘time; i.e. 2:30 am, on my facebook page. There used to be a setting that you could adjust where it wouldn’t be shown. Does anyone know how to do that in the ‘new’ Facebook?

hello Nick O’Neill,
i tried privecy setting # 9. Avoid Embarrassing Wall Posts.
However, if i Adjust Wall Posting Visibility setting, the Control Who Can Post to Your Wall setting also will be change. it seems that they are connected and i can’t make the people who i do not want to see my my wall posting only can post to my wall.
what i want:
1) some friends to see and post my wall
2) some friends only post to my wall
3) others can’t see or post to my wall

can u help please?

any one can help me with wall post it seems that i can’t see the entire post on my wall, i.e. if a friend send me a long post i only can see the first two sentance, and the rest r hiding…Help please

- - - Good info.
People simply need to think 1rst & think an action thru prior to taking it. One needs to keep one’s priorities in perspective. When unsure of the best route to take, ask someone. With so many means of communication available to us now, it seems people just want to save time & take short-cuts. There are none. A moment of precaution can save months of frustration. Believe me,I know; not fun.
Thnak you, Martha. You obviously spent a lot of your time on this with our best interests in mind, Beth

Try as I might, I cannot see how to set specific privacy settings based on a friend category. Any tips?

How do I know what is e-mailed to my friends from my facebook. Is it just my status, any post I make to my wall, what? Can I just allow my facebook to only notify my friends of profile changes so that they are not having to read every post? Like if I go wall-to-wall with my sister in a petty dispute, I don’t want my friends copied on what we are saying? HELP

Thanks Martha for digging in Facebook for the sake of so many people…really helped!

One Question

Is there a way to make your “Personal Information” under the Info Page visible to users you have sent “Add Requests”,because when you change the settings under the Privacy -> Profile -> Personal Info .. it is such that either you make it visible for even those who are not your friends/everyone or you make it strictly for “only friends”.So,is there a way?

A quick answer from someone who knows would be much appreciated.

Thanks in Advance
Sam Rose

I have a question. I have an iphone and want to install the facebook application without facebook posting that I “Installed the facebook application for iPhone” How do I stop people from seeing this.

This is a fantastic post, Nick. Job well done as usual!

Thanks for the info.. but I have realized that even though you do the ‘customized’ privacy settings, other people still can see your pictures… for example, if some of my (allowed) friends ‘likes’ a picture or my album or leaves a comment, it allows others to see it.
Is there a real way to prevent others to see your pics?

Just want to say thanks for the tips

> Socrates - February 20th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
I share the interest to eliminate mundane news feed postings. I don’t mind my friends posting to my WALL because they are polite in direct correspondence. What I want to eliminate is having to slog through other people’s news feeds–specific people who post 15-20 updates in one day. I enjoyed facebook before, Now I have a friend who’s pushing everyone else off my page!!

> Deanna - March 4th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Suggests how to adjust news feed with “Options for News Feed” However I searched for this text on the home page and it could not be found.

Thanks, very enlightening and helpful, especially the screen shots.

Regarding the wall posts visibility….it seems that if I disallow a group from viewing my wall posts they can’t post either?

Hey guys, I’ve read Nicks # 10, but it seems very general. My question is can you can you actually hide specific friends? say I have 20 friends and I want to hide 5, so that if someone checks the number of friends I have he would only see 15 and he can only see those 15. Thanks

Tag this with Privacy.. Almost couldn’t find it again. Great Post!!!

My account was disabled because I was requesting friend data too often. I had Snap2Face configured to update every 5 minutes. I asked Facebook to reactivate my account and they finally did after 5 days. Here is the email I received from Facebook after the reactivation:

Your account has been reactivated. Please significantly slow down the rate at which you browse Facebook, or your account may be disabled again. We would recommend that you discontinue the use of the Snap2Face application as it appears to be flagging your account as abusive. Please notify the developers of this application that this problem has occurred. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

Basically, Snap2Face works great, just don’t configure it for 5 minute updates or they will think you’re a spammer.

By the way, Facebook deactivated my account without warning. It worked fine one day, but I was unable to login the next. They did not even send me an email to explain why.myaccount name is samadtokonamin.my mail samadtokon@yahoo.com.please active my account.

PLEASE……
What can I do If a contact writes down a comment on my wall, but I want to approve it first before it appears definitely on my wall?

When I go to Facebook, I don’t always want my friends to know I’m there. Sometimes I just want to check something quickly and get back out. But many times I get chatters that want to carry on long drawn out conversations with me and I don’t want to be rude.

Is there any way to be on Facebook without my friends seeing that I’m on?

Hello everyone I was wondering if your school can watch what you do on Facebook if your not on there network. Also I was wondering if your school is aloud to delete your facebook if your not 13 and in high school. And most of all what can your school do for stuff that happens on facebook if your not on there network

Thank You

Can you leave your wall on for people to send you messages… BUT, make all wall messages private so that only you can read them?

A facebook friend linked all of my pictures, so now my pictures are on his profile. The settings of my photoalbum are already “for friends only” but in this way his friends can see my pictures, and i dont want that.

Is there any option to unlink my pictures from his profile, and find a way to avoid that he can link my pictures?

Thanks!

i was a facebook member for 2 hours — and got completely creeped out. i’m a little disappointed in people in general as a result — i mean seriously — who — WHO needs to publish so much personal shit about themselves on the internet? you people are effing sheep crossed with robots!!!!

I wish there was a way to choose which friend groups could see certain wall posts. Like in Livejournal you can make your post visible to no one (private), friends only (including different filtered lists of friends), or public. The way it is now you can exclude a friend group from seeing your wall posts, but then they can’t post anything either.

Nice article, but you made a mistake in “7. Protect Against Published Application Stories”, you said it isn’t possible to stop the messages made by applications from appearing.
If you go to:
http://www.facebook.com/editapps.php?ref=mb
Here you see a list of your applications, if you click on “Edit settings” next to an application you can changes its settings and prevent from showing those messages.

How do u add someone to the limited profile group?

What if there are other people in a photo/video of me? Will our mutual friends be able to see the photo/video of me even if i have my settings as “only me” and they allow “everyone on facebook” to see their photos which will feature me as well. thanks!

Thats excellent ….It was really good knowing things which I am not aware of…really useful…thanks dude

Thanks for the info. Btw, I was looking for the slider in facebook settings where you can lessen the wall messages you can receive from that person. I saw it there before but can’t now.

Turning off the view friends function is probably the best advise. You can make your profile water tight by going through and doing all that was recommended here. But if you have view friends visible, and one of your friends isn’t so tight with their privacy, any interactions you have with that person will be visible (on their profile) Photos they tagged or took of you, posts you made to their wall etc.. For example it’s no good setting your privacy to the max then going and saying something bad about someone or your workplace to one of your friends (the one with the public profile). And if people do really want to be private why do they want to let everyone know who they are friends with anyway. If a person really wanted to find out about someone well they’ve suddenly got this nice long list of their contacts names and their mug shots. Very handy if you spot one of these people at a party, you could get to chatting and slowly move the conversation to the person you’re curios about. Who needs facebook, everyone love gossip don’t they.

What’s wrong in using a less intruding network or none at all? We are totally unaware that we becoming pray of the few and some of us love it and ask for more. Its pathetic to say the least

dreamluverz, facebook removed that slider when they updated the site earlier this spring. Your only choices on the news feed (home) page now are to move your cursor over to the right and then to hide a specific person or to hide the application (e.g., quiz or game) that they just used. You can’t opt for “show less,” either. It’s either all visible or all seen for the person/app — and it stinks!

Just don’t be an idiot and put personal information on the web. If you get your identity stolen or are embarrassed by something, it’s your own damn fault for putting that info out there.

i cannot log in facebook, why ???? something problem with my notebook or error system ????

?Need buddy list updated cause there are people not showing up on the apartment doors, and I
have on YoVille screen that someone has invited me to be in their crew: view and accept. Not
able to find area on facebook to do that. Also have 8 people on apartment and not showing as
crew members. Why is that? Please help as I am not the only with these issues.

HOW DO I FIX THIS //////////////////////

If i delete a friend am I immediately untagged from all their photos?

Is there any way u can stop 1 person from talking to u frow instent chat?

i dont wont to bloke them coz thay are a friend but some time i dont always wont to talk to that person i dont wont to stop all my friends from chatting with me just 1 is there any way i can do that?

Very useful informations that more people should be aware of. I wasn’t knowing the possibility to list friends, which is so useful. Thank you !

I wanted to ask one thing: months ago a friends of mine blocked me on facebook, and from that point to few days ago I wasn’t able to find this person in the search results, and in all common friends’ activities, I wasn’t able to see ANYTHING about this person. But a week ago I noticed that reappeared his comment to our common friends’ status, and photos, and activities in general (I am sure I am still blocked). I can see only this comment, but not what he write on the wall of common friends (and obviusly I still can’t find his profile anywhere. the comments appeare with the anonymous blue facebook photo and I cannot click on his name). How is it possible? And if I block someone, this person will ever be able to see my comments?

hey, thanks for showing this.

i want to ask.

how can we add person that there are no “add as friends” and “send messages” link??

i’m so frustated.

help me please

I don’t understand what “tagging” means of videos/photos etc. Can anyone explain that to me please?

alright, so im doing an essay on facebook, and it’s fairly funny what i see on these types things, if you are worried about people that you don’t want to see your pictures, don’t accept them to facebook, and also if you worried about “stalkers” there is a setting where you can put your facebook to private, if some random person adds you, decline them!

thx so much this helped but how do you make the friend lists?

Thanks a bunch for guiding me about facebook. I found this website is a useful resources for a noob on FB like me.

OK, I am able to set up friends lists, as Tip #1 recommends, but only seems to be able to use these lists to filter *incoming* feeds.

How, exactly, can these lists can be tweaked to control *outgoing* feeds of MY personal information?

I’m in Canada - is it possible that these privacy options are not available here???

I have a question. How do I allow all my friends the ability to post on my page while limiting groups of people who can view the posts?

I have set up groups of friends with different privileges and set up permissions in settings/wall/who can see posts. But all this did is disable the ability of the restricted group from being able to post anything on my wall.

i want to make my profile really private so people who are friends with my friends can see my profile at all how can i do it please help

Hi - can you also help with hiding the time/date stamps against activities on Facebook? There used to be a feature to disble them appearing but this appears not to be available any more?
I do not want people knowing when I have accessed FB or indeed to be able to work out how often I have accessd it.
Can you help?
B

thanks for the help!!
i have a question about friend lists. Can my friends see how i categorize them?

That is great information. I really like the idea of taking myseld on the search list thanks!

Hi,
Great info, thanks!
I want to work out why/how it is that my BF’s profile info says he has “19″ friends but only 18 show up when counted ie one is hidden… did he somehow manage to hide just one friend or has that friend somehow hidden themselves (from me)? When I search for that person by name I can find them… which I think suggests they have not blocked me…but my friend does not show up as our mutual friend. I need to work out who did what to achieve this… for obvious reasons. Thanks.

ok so i went out and got drunk one nite..did some stupid stuff that was caught on camera..is there anyway i could prevent this pic from being seen by other people who are also friends with the one who posts the pics, without asking her to post it?

correction..withoug asking her to not post it?

Thanks, appeared quite helpful to me. Tweaked some settings!

FANTASTIC! Thank you so much for organizing this info for us. I too get asked the same questions and you’ve put it all together so nicely. Great job!

Hi there,
Thanks for good info. However, I don’t find this to be true (and I REALLY want to find a way to do this):

———
Control Who Can Post to Your Wall
In addition to controlling who can view wall postings published by your friends, you also want to control which friends can post on your wall. If you visit the Profile Privacy settings page, there is a section labeled “Wall Posts”.

From this area you can completely disable your friends’ ability to post on your wall. You can also select specific friend lists that can post on your wall. Personally, I don’t really care who can post on my wall but I can understand the need to control who can see those wall postings. If you want to limit who can post wall posts on your profile, this is where you can do it.
——–
FB is itself confusing on this–there is the check “Friends may post to my Wall” BUT when you go to customize this, it says “Who Can See This?” And then if you add a name, that person, ironically, can’t SEE posts to your wall (according to “Who Can See This?”), but they can still post there themselves! Or at least this is the way it appears…am I missing something? The wording is really hard to decipher.
Clarification would be great!

Great post, Nick.

I agree with the last post: I can’t find a way to differentiate between who can post to my wall and who can read others’ posts on my wall. Is there one? How?

Also, I did not find any way to restrict my friends so nobody sees them. At the least it always shows them to my friends. Am I missing something?

Thanks!

Thanks for the info, Nick!

Itz very very useful ideas..thanks

I have had no success getting into my facebook. I have requested several times for a new pass word and have not got anything back. HELP!!!!!!!

Can anyone tell me how to turn off general comments to my wall? For example, I don’t want my friends “what’s on your mind” to automatically post to my wall. I don’t mind if a friend wants to write on my wall specifically to me, but I don’t want to get everyone’s constant musings.
Thanks,
Wen

how do i stop people from making coments on my posts

Is it bad that anyone who searches me on facebook can see what school I go to?

Can you just hide one posting on your wall? I like to get most of this groups postings but some can be a little blue so I would like to hide those.

Wow! This is really great. This is a kind of a post that every Facebook user should read. Thanks for this post.

BTW, I forgot to mention about new Facebook user name feature. You might have to update this post after that change (For now I don’t think you will have to). I wrote a post about that “Claim Your Facebook Username Now! - Things to Remember http://tinyurl.com/nsznac“

If I create an album, set the privacy setting as “friends only”, then tag my friends in the pictures, will my friends friends be able to see all the tagged photos of them and then get to view the entire album from the link on the tag photo?

The last part of your article is not correct. The privacy profile for who can see your friends list did not allow me to customize so that only some friend lists can see my friends lists. or is there a way to turn on this function?

Hey nice article. Thanks a lot.

My college administration has found some pictures on my profile and made me delete them.
Very good and useful info, thank you very much!

It’s important to understand that pictures are NEVER private, no matter what setting you choose. Even if the privacy settings are set to “only friends” or a specific group, once any of your friends makes a comment on one of your photos, that photo becomes public. That’s because a line goes in your friend’s News Feed that says “John Smith commented on Jane Doe’s PHOTO”. Any of John Doe’s friends can now click on the word Photo and see the picture AND the ENTIRE album. If he has 2000 friends, all of them can see the whole album. I think this should be made clear in the article.

thanks SO much for posting this. i had about 1/2 of these suggestions set as you suggested, but thanks to you, i made even more changes to keep me as private as possible.

one thing i’d really like to see facebook change is the stupid notifications about applications i dont even use. why isnt there a way to stop them from being posted in the notifications and leave that area for “actual” notifications, ie: someone posted to my wall or commented on a picture, et al? thats the BIGGEST gripe i have with FB.

Great job! I didn’t change most of my privacy settings, but now I know how to customize them and why. Fantastic! I know I’ll use this knowledge in the future.

Very helpful. Can you tell me if there is a way to control individual status messages to show up on certain friends lists. Let’s say I want Status Change 1 only shows up on list1 and list2 but status change 2 shows up on list 3.

The privacy settings allow you to exclude individuals or lists. It would be nice if you had the option to just allow certain individuals or lists. For example, if you have 10 lists and you only want family to see an album, you have to exclude 9 groups rather than just include 1.

since FB going to be famous, security is most important thing FB user think first. This a such good way to be done as soon, thanks, it usefull

how do i stop friend from friends emailing me, i just want the emails that pertain to me, not friends of friends that i dont know, i tried settings, but i need step by step help, thanks

If you exclude someone on something that is friends of friends, are friends of the excuded friend able to view that item?

How the heck do I get the stupid quiz results to stop showing up in my Newsfeed?

I don’t want to block these friends’ status updates or pics, but the quiz results are driving me insane.

Does Facebook have access to my yahoo address book and e-mails?

Thanks..

Privacy setting is the most importing thing when we join to the virtual world. Good Article.

Great info. Will pass this via Twitter.

Thanks for all the great info. Am applying some to my fb.

Very curious about a thing. Untill now I Still cant get the answer.
If I have some people on the ‘BLOCK LIST’. Do they still see my album(Set to ‘everyone’)??

TIA

Help please - I organized my friends but cannot figure out how to have different privacy settings for the different groups. Please explain! Thanks!!!

Thank You ! for your article….

But why does people use Facebook ?
To keep things secret around the world ! Why people writes on walls.. why publishes their pics in facebook ?

If a people follows your all techniques from top to bottom, then I suggest to the people that please do not use facebook. use any Email software like your webmail of Webserver.

Oh God ! there is no any people who can understand the important and usage of an entertainment and broadcasting site.

Suman

I Nick, I cannot find “public seacrh listing” and I do want to be removed from googles seacrh.Could you please help me?

I have a question for anyone. For some reason none of my pages that I am a fan of show up on my page. I can view others pages, but not mine. I was just wondering if anyone knew how to make my pages viewable. I tried looking through my account settings and couldn’t find anything.

There are some things that have happened on facebook that was endangering the lives of people in another country. There WAS someone on my friends list that was posting that they could have people killed.
I tried to get her attention to get her to stop, but even though she acknoleged what I wrote it was all in vain. All that happened was I got timed out on facebook. I didn’t want to report her because we all have rights to post what we like. It wouldn’t mean anything to facebook anyway.

Hi Mari,

I am trying to change my privacy settings for each of my Facebook Friend lists but it is not giving me them as an option.

All Friends can see this.
Friends of Friends
My friends and their friends can see this.
Only Friends
Only friends can see this.
Some Friends
Choose specific friends who can see this.
Only Me

These are my only options…do you know what I need to do to have my Friends Lists show up there???

Thanks!!

It’s really a useful post.
thanks

Another thing I recently noticed is that facebook is magically making friend suggesting of people i know but are not connected to me or any of my facebook friends, or friends of friends.

I read somewhere on the web that Facebook know suggest friends of those people have searched your profile. Doesn’t this violate privacy. Can it be stopped by settings?

So how do you block users from one Friend List from seeing users of another Friend List?

For example, how can I keep those in friend list “Professional” from seeing my friends from list “Friends”, while still allowing them to see those within their respective groups??

Thank you

thank you for posting this very helpful information!

NUBER TWO REMOVE YRSELF FROM GOOGLE

I don’t have a “Public Search Setting” in my “Search Privacy Settings page. Unless I am blind here, I cannot get myself off google–and I just appeared there. I did not used to appear in full profile. Any suggestions as to what to do? I am going to close out my account if I can’t get out of google visibility. I teach.

thanks, nice list! i was already doing most of these but there were a couple i was unaware of. very useful info, thanks for taking the time to post it!

How to remove myself from those applications advertisements? eg. Mint vs Jenny in IQ test etc….

I have a lot of friends I don’t know because I play games that require a lot of friends. I tried using a list to keep my game friends from seeing details about me but it appears not to work. How can I tell what I’m doing wrong?

how about removing from other in gaming application? I’m playing Mafia War, and other can attack me, make me bankrupt

thanks a lot for all information,
but i have a big big problem,that in the 3th one which is “Remove Yourself From Google”
i don’t have “Public search listing” and already i can find my name in google and i can not remove it
what should i do???

hey i remember there was a setting where u can control your news feeds. you could select a certain friend and almost monitor everything they did would post in your feed. If it wasnt someone well you couldve selected events or something so you would get all the feeds of events all your friends were going to. do you know how to do this and can you show me?!!! ( i remember it looked like a volume dial and you could control what was more important and the least important) thank you!

Been considering joining face-book but I’ve heard that face book gives out links to a persons other accounts. I have a Flickr account that I wouldn’t want just anyone to be able to access. Can this access be blocked?

Good info. What I’m looking for, though, is a way to block the feed that tells me what quiz somebody just took, what gift they just got, or what mafia wars weapon they just bought.

I don’t get the Network options in the various examples of privacy settings. I guess that infers you can only control the networks you join. Maybe that means if you don’t join a network, they can’t see you?

It would be incredibly useful if I could make my settings so that certain people cannot see it. Basically my mom made a facebook and i don’t want her to be able to see my pictures or my wall. IS this possible? I want to be able to see her wall though, and still be friends with her.

Nice info…its a good post for newbies like me know about facebook privacy I really appreciate.

Great article, very informative. Most people take these things for granted, good to see someone is reminding us that not everything on FB is as safe as it looks.

the privacy settings DO NOT WORK.

I added my “limited profile” list to all the privacy settings so they should NOT be able to see most of my profile. however when i went to the “see how a friend sees your profile”, they could see everything!

Facebook offers no support and do not address this. i know it is a choice to use the social network but they shouldn’t offer options that DO NOT WORK!

Yes to the Limited Profile comment above, plus I’ve been trying to get FB to answer this question (without success, of course):

When you have a friend in more than one list, and those lists have different privacy settings, which privacy settings are applied to that friend?

Seems an important point, but one that has me — and others, apparently — stymied…

Thanks for this site. I am curious to know who can use facebook as a “facebook user” only. That is no picture, no detail, just “facebook user”. The only giveaway is the mutual friends. That does not sort it out though. Thank you

How do I block sent Friend Wheel quizes?

Hi Nick, all,

Question ad 10. Keep Your Friendships Private: -

What about not being visible on the friends list of others? Specifically when the friend is visible from search engines, it will result in my name being visible on search engines as well! Any ideas?

Hi Nick,

How do I change my surname on my profile - without my old name still showing up on my facebook account map. A friend of mine has tried to change her name on her profile - but Facebook still links her new name to her old one. What can we do?

Hi!
I think there’s a big problem with facebook, especially when you CHANGE your privacy sittings. For example, I’ve been keeping my “status and links” for selected friends, but I want this for a certain period of time.
Now, if I change my privacy sittings to let more people see my status updates this means they can go to my profile and see the older statuses I didn’t want them to see.
I think this is a really big problem.. any solutions?
Plus, have you any idea when the twitter-like version of facebook is gonna be available for public? ’cause I think that might solve this, right?

Wao very informative good good .. thanx

Since when should someone need a degree in software engineering to prevent making an @55 of themselves on the Internet? Facebook designers need to do more thinking so users can stop pulling their hair out.

So , i added a friend of mine, and it appeared to me after 2 days after she accepted, i realized that the account was FAKE! , i’m very scared that the fake person stole my picture! what can i do ?!

picked up some great tips that i haven’t discover yet. thanks!

anyway i have one more question, i posted a comment on my friend’s wall then i deleted her on my list, will my comment still be up on her wall or was it also deleted?

i am 33 years old .i am single.we should love every body.

Thanks for the info…but I have tried to set these privacy settings but its not working. If someone could email me, maybe im missing a step or something. Thanks
Cryeva@verizon.net

Thanks! learnt something new. In addition I also use VPN service from http://www.acevpn.com so that web sites dont keep track of me. Internet is really getting scary!

Thanks for the suggestions. What would be REALLY useful is an option to ’see ourselves as others see us’, to check the settings. So, for example, in each group there could be a’visibility’ button. Click on that and you can see what the group can see about you. Then you would know for sure you’d not forgotten to protect something.

How do u stop certain people from seeing your status?

I can’t do #3. I can’t find that check box.

Thanks.

How do I keep facebook from notiftying my home email everytime someone facebook’s me??

thanks

umm can someone please tell me how do i change my facebook account so only people who add me as a friend can see my profile?

please reply ASAP!!!!!
(because theres this guy thats kinda stalking me.

How can I block my entire wall from being viewed by everyone? I have changed all the privacy settings that have to do with my wall to be viewed by ‘no one’ but it’s not working. Thanks for the help!

i am trying to get out of the google search but the little text where i have to untick the box is gone in my profile….
do you know what i should do???
and great page, by the way
karin

This is a vital information.thanx for the great job.

i need help. why is that my facebook status didnt appear in my wall?

How do I remove the “View Profile” from the search page after someone has searched for me, found me, and then has buttons to select from….I want that removed. Everyone else has send me a message or add as a friend and NOT THE View Profile…no one can seem to help or answer this….please advise

#1. FRIEND LISTS: What’s the point of making friend lists if it doesn’t control what happens on the live feed? You should be able to check which friend list will see anything you post.

Another reason you wouldn’t want your friends visible is that people may judge you based on who you’re friends with.

I know someone who runs an employment service, and she tells me that she has one client who will visit the Facebook pages of potential employees. He considers all of a person’s friends to be representative of that person, so if he doesn’t like their friends, he won’t hire them.

Regarding the screenshot at the end of #4, there is no longer any reference to “Networks” none of my networks”

I have a question as well:
In regards to my friends pictures showing on my profile -FRIENDS, which change daily, does it mean they are on line or they have visited my page?? Or none of those? Thank you anyway and great tips!

Great post, thanks. I see from the comments that things may have changed a little on Facebook since you first posted this, but I’m sure the basics are all there, and I’ll publicise this on my company blog.

Hi All,

Firstly thanks for the post, most useful.

After reading this post, I tried to create a list of companies and “fan” pages that I have added to my profile, and tried to ban them from accessing any information, and it doesn’t seem to work. It raised a question, hope someone knows the answer.

When facebook was changed months ago, they announced that all “fan” pages and companies having their profiles and added to your list of friends will appear on your wall with their posts.
My question is does this mean that the creator of that company account/fan page has access to all my pictures and data like a friend does?

Cheers,
Chakotay

I’m gonna’ send this URL to all my Facebook friends. (hopefully) they’ll understand WHY I don’t participate in any of their requests to try out things like, “Find Your Hippie Name”, etc, etc
Many thanx

I want to be able to spontaneously choose who I share a post with (networks, friends only, friends excluding those on selected list, or various lists) at the very moment I make it… so if I feel like sharing something with all friends I can do so, but if I feel like restricting the post to those friends on a selected list then I can do so for that specific post only. Is this possible?? What am I missing?

I am having a problem with my facebook page just on my new hp laptop. The toolbar at the bottom of the page is always in the middle of my page. Do anyone have a clue as to how I can fix this problem?

I noticed that my ex’s status updates no longer show up in my news feed. I can go to her page and see her status updates, but they don’t show up in my news feed. Did she somehow block them from appearing in my news feed? How did she do this? This pisses me off because I am over her and don’t care.

Thanks!

How do you change your password on facebook when you forget what it was?

Nick, nice stuff, really i don’t know about facebook privacy settings at all. I got good idea of the facebook privacy settings. Thanks for it

I have been using facebook for long now and that too many hours a day and still i didnt know about all these features.
Thanks for this!!!

i would like to know how you can hide your online presence???? i hate the annoying IM chat thing that people do to you, it is such a distracting waste of time. i saw the ‘hide online presence’ box in my privacy settings and altered it but the stupis box keeps popping up with friends saying ‘hey, watcha doin’?” help?

Good information all around, but the overall effect seems so ridiculously paranoid that I wonder why such a person would be using Facebook to begin with.

If your professional life needs to be firewalled so completely from everything and anything that goes on in your personal life — well, first, you may want to consider that your job ain’t all that — then maybe you shouldn’t be mixing the two things on a SOCIAL NETWORKING Web site.

Good info- thanks!
Yes- it’s true for all of you that feel the need to let everyone in on your little “secret”- you can save your privacy by not using FB in the first place. But seriously- don’t come knocking on the door of people trying to help just to spill your suggestions! That’s your choice- good for you for sticking to it, but don’t make a big deal about it! This is our choice to use it and if we want to find information from people like Nick here on trying to take extra precautions than so be it! Let it along already!!
Geesh…

Thx Nick. One Q - I have set up custom viewing lists for my albums. Can a friend post MY album on HIS wall and can then my photos be seen by His friends who are NOT on my custom list? I sure hope not…

Thank You for this very good info

Regarding Sam’s question about friends who post links to your photo albums, this was bothering me as well and I couldn’t find an answer anywhere, but have now tested it out for myself -

If your albums are set to ‘friends only’, even if someone posts a link to them their friends will be unable to see the link, (unless they’re also friends with you obviously)and the notification of the link will not appear in their news feeds at all. Try and find one of your friends with a lot of links, note how many links it says there are on their profile, then click into the links and see how many you can actually view - for example you might be able to see only 8 out of 10 total links - that’s because 2 of the links are to albums that someone has set to ‘friends only’.

Someone else asked about friends of friends seeing photos that you have tagged a friend in. Again if your album is definately set to ‘friends only’ even if you tag a friend, their friends will not see that photo in your friend’s ‘Photos of ….’ section. That’s why some friends profiles may say ‘view photos of…(100)’ but when you click in to view the photos, the number you can view is actually less because some of the photos are from restricted albums.

How do you block someone who has already blocked you? This person could randomly go in and unblock me and then return to the block. I want to be able to block him so he can’t do that. When I pull his name up it doesn’t show up so that I can block him….complicated.

Ok, so I did a quiz and figured if I set it so ‘Nobody’ could see the app, except for 2 people under the do not enter sign it would mean only they can see it. I have a test account on Facebook and see that everyone can see what the app published. I removed the app but everyone can still see what it published. Any ideas?

wow this is a little paranoid. what’s the point of social networking if you’re hiding everything from everybody?

my ex has hid just one person from her friends list from me, how has she done it, I cant find that setting any where

Ever notice that some of the nosiest FB stalkers are the ones who put themselves on mega-privacy, super-unsearchable mode…?

Does anyone know why when I hide my friends list from my friends, they are still able to view my entire list of friends if we have mutual friends? They are able to do so when they click the “view all” link under the mutual friends category. Does anyone know how to turn this off too?!

Rule #0:
Don’t use your real name, only people that you ACTUALLY KNOW will be able to friend you!

i kind of disagree with point #2 i.e. removing yourself from facebook results completely. it will be pointless to join facebook if you want to shell yourself from everyone. plus, the whole thing that makes facebook great is the ability for long lost friends and current friends that you might not have seen in a long time to be able to find you. i found so many old friends from 20+ years ago that i would have otherwise forgotten by them searching for me.

i agree about certain amount of privacy but not putting a complete shell around yourself. if ultra privacy is your biggest fear, then one shouldn’t be joining a social networking app like facebook.

Hello, I added a screenname in the contact information in my profile, how can i delete it? I only want to show my AIM, nothing else…i cant remove other screennames!!

Great post. Everyone should be careful with their image online.

what is the facebook security code ? i can not login it is not really fair coz i do not know the pass to my hotmail and i cant send the code to my hotmail

Very good information on maintaining privacy. Thank you!

Info on how to track recent visitors to my page

If I categorize my “friends” into groups, will people be able to see which goup I categorized them into?

I was just hijacked yesterday. Someone contacting friends through chat asking for money saying I was in trouble and mugged in London. So NOT I am disable and cannot access
my page. Will I ever get it back? I wrote facebook and
reported it, sent a few copies of dialogs a few friends sent to me and changed passwords etc.

What happens next?

Correction:

I was just hijacked yesterday. Someone contacting friends through chat asking for money saying I was in trouble and mugged in London.

So NOW I am disabled and cannot access my page.

Will I ever get it back?

I wrote Facebook and reported it, sent a few copies of dialogs a few friends sent to me and changed passwords etc.

What happens next?

pls tell me how can I show my MUTUAL FRIEND again, because I dont know why, It’s gone from my profile.
Thank about Your Information.

Pls tell me why My MUTUAL FRIEND in my profile is gone. How is shown again.
Thx about your info.

Everyone - read this article
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_13210334
Here’s the 1st paragraph:
“Privacy advocates have long warned that users of Facebook and other social networks who seek amusement from quizzes like “What Simpsons Character Are You?” might be mortified by the way creators of such applications can access and potentially “scrape” personal information — not just about the quiz-takers, but their friends as well.”
My advice: don’t take these quizes, don’t play these games, don’t take thise polls. There are so many other ways to amuse yourself!

1. may I know, when I send out a friend request, how do I block out all info.

2. From my friends list I would like to block out the groups that I have joined.

the most serious hole in facebook privacy is that anyone on your friends list can deactivate their account so you can’t see or remove them, but they can reactivate for short periods to look at your profile

Thank you! These tips were helpful!

I have to agree with one poster, if you want to remain completely private then you have to stop or never use social networking sites. And no matter what anyone says you cant completely control how you show up in search engines and believe me you do. If you have a myspace, facebook, twitter, etc. profile, blog, website you will be in the search engines. If you are self employed, in business for yourself and have any kind of web presence you’ll be in linked in, zoom info, D&B, even some chamber of commerce websites. Privacy is a thing of the past basically.
Personally I like the web presence for professional and hobby reasons.
BUt if you don’t then it’s time to get off the internet.

Still, I don’t want my boss to see anything in my wall (but just him) or in my notes or boxes, but there’s nothing to block them from all that information, just bits.

Say if I set a photo album only to be viewed by friends on my ‘work’ list/group of friends. Then someone from the ‘work’ list/group of friends comments on the photos. What do people who are my friends but not in the ‘work’ list (so can’t see the photos) and who are also friends of the person who commented see?

Do they see the ‘Mr X commented on J’s photos’ or does it show the photo, the comment and the name of the album or something in between?

Thanks.

I have all those settings applied, but there are still holes. With items posted to the Home Page or the Highlights (where your friends have commented on their friends pics) and within your photo albums, there is the ability to Share. Here you can Share your friends, and their friends private pictures with any of your friends, or post it to your own profile for all your friends to see.
Be careful who you give access to this information that can be shared out, until these privacy setting are tightened up!

Can someone please answer a yes-or-no question for me: I have an ex-friend who I share a mutual friend with. I had de-activated my FB account but would like to go back without the ex-friend knowing. If I block her, will my name show up in the mutual friend’s list of friends enabling the ex-friend to see that I’m back on FB?(I hope that makes sense.)

There is a proven method available for accessing photos from private profiles, it is described in:

http://privacystalker.blogspot.com/

It uses brute force attack approach! It works for me!!
It was written in spanish but you can always use google translator or babylon…

QUESTION!

Can I hide my profile picture from Non-friends?
The profile picture lacks some privacy setting, (I think) and mine is a little less then professional looking.
I have started to create groups networking with people in my industry, But I don’t want them to see my profile picture when they click on my name in the group etc..unless I have accepted there friendship.

any Ideas?, please help!
-b

Tommy wrote : Does anyone know why when I hide my friends list from my friends, they are still able to view my entire list of friends if we have mutual friends? They are able to do so when they click the “view all” link under the mutual friends category. Does anyone know how to turn this off too?!

I want know teh answer too… can function OFF realize ?
thanks

I really like facebook.In this 21st century its a boon to be connected to many friends and share our feelings and we can get connected to yhe whole world but one privacy settin g i did not found is that all my friends can see my friends and they may use them for various purposes .so that bow to get rid of that

Thanks for the tips! I am a frequent Facebook user and I can definitely use this info! I am a teen writer at RadicalParenting.com which is a parenting blog from the kid’s perspective there are 60 teen and tween writers run by teen author, Vanessa Van Petten. We just posted a video of “How to set Privacy Settings in Social Networks” here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weM8rcAhAw8

and would love for you to check it out and tell us what you think or repost if you like it,

Cheers, thanks for checking it out!

G and the Teen Team
http://radicalparenting.com

I’ve tried banning certain individuals from seeing and posting
on my wall in face book and it hasn’t worked. Not only can they see my wall they can post $hit!

The settings quite clearly say Friends can post on my except “joe blogs” and it still lets them.

Can anyone help?

Wow, lot of great tips in here.

So does anyone know how to make my relationship status only available to like 10 people?

Thanks this is very useful info, it seems like Facebook is better suited to friendships and Twitter is better for business, mixing them can be tricky but these tips help.

Awesome work, I’ve seen people play tricks on others by tagging them in silly photos, so your Tip Number 4 is invaluable. Keep up the great work!

Awesome….but i have a question…
does anyone know if i can block certain from seeing me on THEIR mini-feed. I dont want to unfriend my brother, but he feels the need to comment on everything when i pop up in his minifeed, and I’d prefer he just left me alone….thanks

Jay

Here’s a question you might be able to answer…

I notice on certain friends’ profiles, I can only see their activity on their wall (when they comment on pictures or statuses, etc.) when that activity is done with a mutual friend. If they comment on a photo of someone who isn’t a mutual friend, I won’t see it on their wall.

Do you know where this setting is? I’d like to implement it, but can’t find it.

Thanks!

wow loads of comments, just wanted to be a part of it lol

woow this wass really valuble informationnn .

Hi just wanted to know is there any way, one can stop strangers from sending you messages on facebook?

I am a newby, so I do appreciate your information. For those who can’t find the “public search” box……
Settings> Privacy Settings> Search..BOTTOM of this section is the Public Search Listing: The box should be “unchecked”/empty if this is the setting that you want.
Be sure that you scroll down far enough to see it on your screen. Sort of hidden, isn’t it?

Is there a way to block people from commenting on your status?????

By the way, there is now no way on earth to do number 9. You cannot, repeat CANNOT control which friends can post to your wall… I was told you can do that with friends lists. Not so, at least I have not found that function anywhere. Anyone else know how?

Also, why is the number of friends you have (or on a certain list) not shown at the top of the friends list page anymore? Grrrr! Why do they keep messing with what was useful info? Jee wiz!

I would like to know who messing around with my first chance of getting on this site, cause now I can’t get on!!!

There are detailed answers to just about any question under the “Help” section (look at the bottom right corner of most pages). Then search and read the topics/answers provided by Facebook (I would not recommend using the interactive part of the Help section…it’s mostly people asking questions over and over again that have already been answered…and then expecting that FB will contact them directly to answer their question).

All the answers are out there if you are willing to search (oh, and READ too!)

Hello, I could not find a solution to my problem or to be more precise only a confusing one.
My problem: I restricted the visibility of my wall at the privacy setting so that only my friends can see my wall.
Problem: I tested it and still people who are not my friends can see my wall.
How is that possible?
Now I read that in the official help:
“My privacy settings restrict somebody from seeing my Wall posts, but the Wall still displays when I view my account as that person.
When you restrict someone from seeing your Wall posts, they will still be able to see posts that you make, comments on those posts, and Recent Activity stories that appear on your Wall.”
Eh…when I restrict somebody they will still be able to see it?
To be honest I don’t get it at all, maybe somebody can explain that to me.
My goal: My wall should dissapear for people who are not my friends

can anyone please please explain to me how i can put back to how it should be my pages below my groups on my info section as i just cannot find out how to do it, asap please anyone! would be a legend if you can help me to do it.
thankyou x

thats so cool thanks

thank you for your post obama said dont post much your info to facebook

Thank you sincerely for a VERY informative post. I will definitely be downloading and recommending your outstanding information.

Appreciatively,

Donna

I’d like to receive a free ebook via pdf..thanks.Yvonne

Dude these tips are so sick! Shout out to Justin and the Mommy! Learned so much! Go Liiiiiiiiiiii!

There is someone who create an embrassing status from website in my wall post….With All Do Respect would you track for me the person….And You should Banned The Person….Thank You….

Best Regards,

Edwan Widianto

I would love to know, who was the clever guy that reported THIS GREAT LINK as abusive in facebook, so we can no longere can not post it or suggest it to any friend…
Must be the Lead in the air…

Apologize… maybe a 5 minutes bug… It stoped saying it was abusive… Wondering what was…

How can I hide COMMON FRIENDS on Facebook?

whats the diff between personal info and basic info. Like i want my profile private but my status and picture to be shown

what am i supposed to do to block numbers of my friends to anyone except my friends only

Could you please educate me on how to protect my photos from facebook itself? There is a rumour making the rounds that your photos -though private to you -can and will be utilized -printed published by facebook at any time. Is this true? And how can I insure that my photos are never used by facebook?

How do I hide wall posts from a certain friend list?

Thanks this is a lifesaver!!!

Has anyone noticed that Facebook privacy settings aren’t working properly anymore? I have my profile set so people can only send me a message but not befriend me. Still I’ve been getting alerts saying people have added me as a friend regardless.

Rrr. I have a bunch of lists set up mainly so I can check up on the newsfeeds from family, friends, etc. separately. Problem is, it doesn’t work. There are people who are not on my “Bestest Buddies” list whose posts continue to show up in the newsfeed. Similarly, there are people on the list whose posts I am missing (I can go to their profile page and see that they’ve been posting). Sometimes I don’t know why I bother with facebook.

i can visit a friend’s wall, info & boxes who is not actually my friend in facebook, but my sister can’t visit from her account. mutual friends are there for me n my sis also with that person. how can it happen?

hi all

i sent someone a message in facebokk that wasn’t my friend. I got no reply so im wondering if they got it at all. Is it possible to block emails from non friends? I was able to click on ’send a message’ on their profile though.

Hi, I’ve seen that some people appear as ” facebook user” so their name doesn’t come up, to everyone except their friends how can i do this?

Thank you for these tips. People have no idea what they are getting into when they start on facebook and information like this is very valuable.

One of my friends disapeared off my list but i still have the same number of friends and cannot find them in a search. But when i go on her friends profile it shows im still mutual friends with her, but i cant click on her nor can i see her picture?

would this be a error with facebook or would she have blocked me?

Is there a way that you can hide your mutual friends??
Help please thanks

thnx,
this information is very useful of me. i suggests my collegue pls follow these steps to make urself secure.

Nice guidelines, people should read and apply these settings but unfortunately, you don’t read this until their accounts are hacks or emails are spammed.

Thank you very much, now I can finally control the amount of people commenting on my wall. Is there anything I can do to limit the amount of messages I recieve? I am a bit famous in SA TX and my profile is overwhelmed whith people’s spam

I’ve noticed that the setting for who can see your friends does not work. I have mine set to only friends. I would expect then that NO ONE can see my list of friends unless they are already my friend.

I tested with an account that is not my friend. Though they cannot seem my profile information- they can see my friends and use those links to get to accounts of friends that are not tightened down and view any information I have with that person. Yes- its a risk that anyone could find said unsecure friend- but being able to see my friends list pretty much tells them exactly who to look for.

Who knows how to log a bug with facebook?

If you try to add someone as a friend and they go onto your list as pending.Then when you check in a few days time they are gone off your list,does this mean they have denied you as a friend?.

Why can’t there be a setting to block certain friends from being able to see a wall posting on your profile. Not the whole wall, just a specific posting. i.e. a funny joke which might not be so funny to your mom or your little sister. The only options we have right now is to either risk offending them or not posting it at all.

haha way to go nick XD

thank you for this wonderful help tips….it is a life internet saver….glad u sent me one!

a girl with an email mishaqueen@hotmail.com hacked my account and she is misusing her facebook please block her for five years so she gets a lesson she even shows pornography and nudity

To whom it may concern:

I opened a new account on 9/30 and spelled my last name wrong and didn’t notice it until after all the signing in, etc. was done. I didn’t know how to get in and change the spelling so I chose to cancel Facebook and they said it would be done within 14 days.

I want to sign up again and be able to use my email address of captainjohn@conceptcable.com. Please advise me how soon I will be able to join Facebook again with the email address.

Thank you,

John Bockemuehl

Thank you for this. You confirmed what I wanted to be certain of, by changing the search features I can’t be found by others.

Another note, under the privacy settings. The block list. If there is someone you don’t want to be able to find you at all, and you have their email address (especially the one associated with their account) you can block that person. They wont be able to find you if they search for you, they can’t see any part of your account at all. A very important feature to be aware of.

if faculty members at a college join facebook do they get special access? Specifically can they check any student’s profile? What if they’ve specifically been blocked?

This is something i heard…just looking for a confirmation/rejection to this.

Can certain people get special access on facebook?

Firstly thank you for the info… as I needed help because facebook does not offer a tatorial such as this one to help you with protecting yourself… and secondly I think it is funny that your page is about privacy and then you have to put your name and e-mail down as a requriement…..

To the guy above me…. Only Police or people of law can have special acsess to Fbook or e-mail or anything as long as they have either permision or a warrent…

what if someone put up a picture of me on their account and won’t take it down upon multiple request????

i’m onfacebook,but don’t want certain people who i am freinds with know that…is there a way of removing yourself from certain people so they don’t know your on the site?

Hi Nick, thanks for the above tips. I have a question though:
When my friends leave comments on my Profile photos, it appears in my friend’s wall and his friends (who are not mine) can see it (e.g. Joe made a comment on Dave’s photo). How do I make sure that my Profile photos are seen only by my friends? For photo albums it’s quite easy as you can change the privacy settings, but such thing doesn’t seem to be available for the profile photos.

Thanks,
Dave

Hi Nick, thanks for the above tips. I have a question though:
When my friends leave comments on my Profile photos, it appears in my friend’s wall and his friends (who are not mine) can see it (e.g. Joe made a comment on Dave’s photo). How do I make sure that my Profile photos are seen only by my friends? For photo albums it’s quite easy as you can change the privacy settings, but such thing doesn’t seem to be available for the profile photos.

Thanks,
Dave

Dear Nick,
your article is really great, but I have one question, kind of similar to jova’s.
I am not on Facebook and I have never been (or any other social network for that matter) but still my friends, who are on facebook, use photos of me and leave them there for everyone to see. Is there anything I can do about it? If I wanted my photos on internet, I’d put them there myself.
Tanx,
Mary

Hi Nick,

Thanks for this valuable info.

I would like to know if through Friends Lists, we can make some friends “hidden” or “invisible” to others?

Is there a way to do that?

Many thanks
I

Altough i am a new loyal reader of this blog, i just stumbled upon this article…Excellent resource..Thank You!

Excellent! This is what I was searching for a long time. #privacy

I have followed all the rules of privacy and I understand the advantages/disadvantages of FB, but there is one thing I couldn’t achieve: ** In regards to pictures tagged of me, I customized it as viewed ONLY by me, just because the old pics from my old firends, I don’t want them visible to everyone. But my tagged pics from my today’s friends, I want them visible, abd since they belong to the my “tagged by friends” album, NONE of them are visible to others. There is something I can do to solve this issue? Can I go to that albun and change settings pic by pic? therefore I’ll be controling what pics tagged of me could go visible and which one no. Thanks for your help

Now facebook changed the privacy page and I donno how to make so others wont see my picture when they wanna add me

Very nice post

Great article, very useful, thanks - especially for the links to the profile edit options which I couldn’t find otherwise.

In the interest of perfection, your phrase “More often then not…” should be “More often than not…” (than not then).

i’ve noticed that if one of your friends has commented on a photo-you can view the whole album of that person-who is not your friend.. even though that person has a private page on facebook…

is there any way i can post albums and have my friends comment yet still disallow THEIR friends from getting into my album via their comment which is shown on their wall…

would appreciate any info/advice on this…

im an ass! withass ears and everrything! but im cool like that im cool like that im cool like that! like the tide cool commmercial…thts how cool!….. i bet your not as cool as this ass!….with my ass ears…. i dress funny too! and my friend tina likes to masterbate with ceader root! hahaha

A lot of people are posting saying, essentially, that you should avoid Facebook because of all the privacy issues, (which I don’t agree with … Facebook has value for me).

Others post, saying they wish they could control this or that. Followups typically say something like “you can already do that, by doing this or that.”

If that reply comes with information on how to make such a setting, that’s fine and I welcome such posts.

But, if the reply also says something along the line of “it’s easy, just do this” and “Facebook already provides a way to control your privacy” I have to disagree. This page is long, and it’s long for a reason. Nor is it totally comprehensive, and that’s not the fault of the author.

The fact is it’s very difficult to navigate and comprehend all the possible privacy settings, Facebook’s defaults are oriented toward marketing information which is the road to profitability for Facebook itself, and you need to spend a great deal of time to set your account in a way that is right for you.

It took me more than an hour to dig through all the necessary privacy settings on Facebook; thankfully I don’t have many apps, or it probably would take 2 hours. I don’t think Facebook does a good job of transparency and they clearly do a poor job of making privacy settings easy.

Whatever you can and can’t do, regarding privacy settings, it’s definitely NOT easy. It’s often available, but without an article like this, for most people, it would be essentially impossible.

That isn’t good enough. Facebook needs to step up and clear some hurdles.

wow, this was extreeemely helpfull, especially about the tagged photos thing! kuz i am so not photogenic, and ppl just seem to post the most hiddeous photos of me without my concent, and it gets really annoying. and then when you ask them to remove them, they dont want to! well i got somethin for them now lol!

I disagree with all the smug people saying “for absolute privacy, just don’t use facebook” - NOT TRUE.

I thought this way for a while until I found out through friends that pictures of me were appearing on facebook anyway. Because I didn’t have an account, some idiot friends/acquaintances of mine were tagging my full name on picctures, but I had no idea of this. An overseas visitor even uploaded pictures of the outside of my house, featuring my car, dog etc. which I obviously don’t want online. Because I didn’t have facebook I wasn’t aware of any of this.

If I’d joined earlier I would have been a) tagged in pictures properly, thereby giving myself the option to remove the tag and b) seen when friends uploaded pictures, thereby giving me the option to ask them to remove them.

So it’s actually safer to have an account under your real name because then you have much more control over what is being uploaded! If you log on daily you can get things removed pretty quickly, either by untagging yourself (they can’t re-tag you) or by simply asking your friends to remove pics (and unless your friends are jerks, they will).

Without an account it is MUCH harder. When I finally joined I had to go through years’ worth of old albums and point out to friends all the places where I wanted my name and/or image removed! Who knows who could have seen them?!

Wish there was an option to disallow certain friends from viewing the wall completely.

I tried Facebook and now I would like to delete my page. Can someone tell me how to do this?

Thx alot for the info. very informing.
Just to let you guys know, If you want to schedule your facebook posts securely you can do this by using social tomorrow

greets,

Well done, old chap!
Bloody well done!

Thanks. I have searching this info for couple of weeks. Need to buat duit now!

how to hide some my friend list 1 by being mix up with my friend list 2?i want to make friend list 1 cant view my friend list 2 and friend list 2 only can view friend list 2…but there’s no settings for this.can anyone help me?

Thanks for the information. I only wonder why facebook not provide any privacy setting. Other than that yup it is nice and very useful.

I’m frustrated because I’m trying to use my friends lists to control privacy settings, but when I “impersonate” a friend, they are seeing everything but my status updates. There are many people who I want to block from photos etc. and it doesn’t seem like it’s working. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

I didn’t see it but was wondering how you keep a person from commenting on a photo (any photo) just like you can keep them from posting to your wall. Basically just letting them benignly observe my wall and info and notheig more than message me.

hey can anyone of u tell me how can i hide my profile picture(display picture)from those who are not in my friendlist….i knw how ot hide album but here m talking about profile picture..is it possible????

the photos that i have checked for “only friends” to see are not working and i’ve tripled checked all the settings, but they still won’t show up. are their any solutions to this?

Thank you so much for posting this. My husband brought a printed out version distributed where he works, and I get to benefit from it too. THANK YOU!!

Hi..

How do people get their photos blank and their name black that can not be clicked?

I see this one some people that are not my friends.

I’d like to be seen in that way by non friends..

Thanks in advance.

Plese tell me i have hidden some of ma friends in Facebook but now i want to unhide them how to take them out?

- Is there a way to see how your profile is viewed by “friend of a friend”, “member of a group you are a member of”, “member of a network you are a member of (specific network)”, other?? There is a way to see how your profile is viewed by a friend (privacy/profile/See how a friend sees your profile).

- Are members of a group you are a member of considered “friends of friends”?

I have been SEARCHING for the answer to this question, but have thus far not found it. I hope you can help.

I notice that when looking through other people’s friends list, some will give the person’s name only, some will give their name and city, and others will give the person’s name, city and/or their most recent wall post.

I do not want my most recent wall posts or status updates to appear on other people’s friends list when they’re being viewed by third parties. I would like only my name and city to appear. How do I stop the wall post from appearing?

Thank you I learned a few more features. This was put together brilliantly & in a language we can all understand. I just wish there was a way people could not steal your photos, upload them into their Computer & post them in their albums as if they were the ones that took the photos. I know that if you could see it they could copy it. This is sad because the actual photographers are not getting any credit for it. Any ideas?

Thanks for the help!
But one privacy problem is still left over:

Even if I make “only friends” see my photos, as soon as I tag a friend, his/her friends are able to see not only that pic but my WHOLE ALBUM as well!!!
How can I change this?
Thank you!!!

I didn’t consider until recently, that using my child’s photo as my profile pick could be dangerous! I know, stupid me….. but you often just don’t consider what the sickoes out there do! A warning to all those proud parents out there…. a friend of a friend was propositioned on how handsom their child is and what was their name etc…. well, alarm bells rang! So I explored my security settings and set my search options to only show my name. Only approved friends can see my photos, and my profile. Thanks for the refresher! It is good practice to regularly check your security settings…. you just never know if a glitch has changed it all to public or not!

Just another tip for #7. When you add an application, mouse over your ’settings’ and scroll down to the bottom where you will see ‘application settings’ There will usually be 2 tabs, ‘bookmark’ and ‘additional permissions’. Select the latter and uncheck the box for ‘Publish recent activity (one line stories) to my Wall’. I do this immediately after adding any application.

Wow. This is awesome. I was getting tired of having to remove embarrassing tags because I wanted to go out and have fun one night.

any idea how to be ‘invisible’ to other members while you are online working/playing on facebook?

Shyrl- Click on “Chat” at the bottom right corner of the page, and open the box that shows which of your friends are online. Click on “Options” at the top of that box, and select “Go offline”. Once you see the little dot turn grey, you’re offline. If it’s green, then people can see that you’re online. Just remember that if you post something anywhere on Facebook, it will show the time you posted, so people will be able to tell that you’re on Facebook. But if you just want to be invisible and look around, you should be ok.