Last week Facebook rolled out a new version of their privacy settings to all users. Privacy settings are something that many Facebook users are regularly confused about. That’s why we published our original Facebook privacy guide back in February. After millions of people visited our privacy guide, we realized how important privacy is to Facebook users. With the new settings rolled out, we thought that now would be a great time to update the guide with the latest changes.
In this guide we present a thorough overview of the most important privacy settings which includes previous settings that are still relevant as well as new privacy settings that have been added by Facebook. The majority of the old privacy settings are still relevant, however there’s a chance that you may now be sharing much more information with the whole world. Make it through our new Facebook privacy guide and you’re guaranteed to be safe.
1. Understand Your Friend Lists
As we described in our previous Facebook Privacy guide, Facebook friend lists are the cornerstone of privacy on Facebook. While you don’t need to take advantage of friend lists, understanding this feature will instantly turn you into a “Facebook power user”. Understand that friend lists can take time to configure so don’t expect to breeze through this step. The concept behind friend lists is simple: it’s a way of organizing your friends into various affiliation groups. If you aren’t clear with our explanation, here’s how Facebook describes friend lists:
Friend Lists provide organized groupings of your friends on Facebook. For example, you can create a Friend List for your friends that meet for weekly book club meetings. You can filter your view of each list’s stream of activity separately on the home page. Friend Lists are easy to manage and allow you to send messages and invites to these groups of people all at once.
As I previously wrote, there are a few key things to understand about friend lists:
- You can add each friend to more than one Friend List
- Friend Lists should be used like “tags” as used elsewhere around the web
- Friend Lists can have specific privacy policies applied to them
The most common lists that many privacy experts will refer to are “Friends”, “Family”, and “Professional” however there’s a limitless combination of lists that you can create. Truthfully, it doesn’t matter how many friend lists you create, although I prefer to simplify things as much as possible. The key thing to understand is that your friends’ privacy settings will always default to the most restrictive friend list they’ve been placed in.
For example, let’s say your friend John is someone you met at work but continue to hang out with outside of work. You may have placed them in your “Work Contacts” Friend List and your “Local Friends” Friend List. If your “Work Contacts” cannot see photos you’ve been tagged in and your “Local Friends” can, John will not be able to see photos you’ve been tagged in.
You can configure your Friend Lists by visiting the friends area of your Facebook.
2. Remove Yourself From Facebook Search Results
My mom is a teacher and one of the first things she asked me when she joined Facebook is how she could make sure her students couldn’t see that she was on the site. Understandably my mom doesn’t want her middle school students to know what she’s up to in her personal life. There are numerous reasons that individuals don’t want their information to show up in search results on Facebook, and it’s simple to turn off your public visibility.
Within the new search privacy settings page, Facebook has made things extremely straight forward. There are now two settings: one for those people who can find you when searching on Facebook, and one for those searching within search engines (which the next section describes). In order to prevent others from finding you in Facebook’s search results, it’s two quick steps:
- Visit your search privacy settings page.
- Click on “Edit Settings” and enter your password.
- Next to “Facebook Search Results” select the “Only Friends” privacy setting.
Strangely enough, Facebook doesn’t require you to click on “Save Changes” anymore, however these new settings should now be set.
3. Remove Yourself From Google
Facebook continues to receive A TON of traffic from displaying user profiles in search engines. Not all of your profile is displayed though. As was the case in our previous Facebook Privacy guide, the information displayed in the search profile is limited to: your profile picture, a list of your friends, and a list of up to approximately 20 Facebook Pages that you have become a fan of.
As many users have found out, your friend information is available in your public listings. To block that information from being publicly accessible you can remove yourself from Google’s index and other search engines. Some people enjoy having their information displayed in search engines, as it makes them easy to find. For those that prefer to err on the side of privacy though, it’s often a good idea to remove yourself from the search engines.
To remove yourself from the search engines, visit the search privacy settings page and simply uncheck the box next to “Public Search Results” which says “Allow Indexing”. You’ll need to wait for Google and other search engines to remove your information from their cache, so don’t be surprised if you still show up in the search engines for a few weeks.
4. Avoid The Infamous Photo Tag Mistake
Many users are getting smarter about their privacy settings, however I continue to hear horror stories of users who have their relationships damaged as a result of photos they’ve been tagged in. More than just having their relationships damaged, some users get fired as a result of photos they’ve been tagged in. There are a number of ways to work around this problem. One of the ways is described later in this guide, however there is an extremely easy way to avoid having compromising photos show up to friends.
Head over to the profile privacy settings page and go to the section which says “Photos and Videos of Me”. Then click on the drop down selector, and click on the “Custom” option. You can then select “Only Me” as displayed in the image below. Keep in mind that this will block all people from seeing any images or videos that you’ve been tagged in. Many users want their friends to see photos they’ve been tagged in though.
So how do you work around this issue without putting your job or relationships at risk? The best way is to take advantage of the friend lists that you previously created (in the first setting) and limit specific people from seeing the images and videos you’ve been tagged in. For example, it’s probably not the best idea to have your professional contacts see the images you’ve been tagged in. If you have a professional list, you can simply enter that friend list under “Hide this from” in the custom privacy dialog box which is shown below.
5. Protect Your Albums
As I mentioned in the previous privacy guide, one of the greatest risks on Facebook is that you get tagged in a compromising photo. However it’s important to consider who you really want to have viewing your photo albums. Given Facebook’s custom privacy settings you are able to get as granular as you’d like with the visibility of each album. Thanks to the new publisher privacy settings, you can even get granular with every photo that you post if you really want to have complete control.
What privacy settings you choose for your albums is completely up to you, but if you do want to limit access to your albums, I recommend visiting the photos privacy settings page and limiting the access of each of your albums to “Only Friends” at the least. Unless you are a professional photographer, there probably isn’t much of a reason for making your albums visible so that the whole world can see them.
6. Avoid The Post-Breakup Facebook Effect
I’m seriously sorry to hear that you that you just broke up with your boyfriend. Do all of your contacts really need to hear about that though? Since posting our last Facebook privacy guide, I’ve seen countless people publicly update their relationship status as though everybody needs to hear about it. Relationship status changes have become such a large component of my Facebook news feed that I recently decided to write an entire post on The Post-Breakup Facebook Effect.
Strangely enough, there is a new mating ritual which has evolved on Facebook and often relationship status changes are part of that process. Often times after a female changes her relationship status to “Single”, a whole slew of new “potential suitors” start commenting on the relationship status change and write posts on her wall. Honestly, I see nothing wrong with this process and find it quite entertaining, however it probably is something that you don’t want all of your contacts to know about, especially your professional contacts.
While I’ve chosen to avoid relationship statuses altogether, some users still want to have them displayed. While many people like to let the world know that they are in a relationship, you can avoid having a relationship status change becoming the talk of the town. While Facebook has now removed the feature which lets users control which actions generate news feed stories, you can still protect the visibility of your relationship status.
Simply go to your profile privacy settings page and change the “Family and Relationship” setting to “Only Me”. While it would be great to make that information public, it’s currently impossible to control whether or not a relationship status change creates a news feed story. As such, I believe it’s better to play things safe and block users from seeing your relationship status.
7. Control What Information Applications Can Access
The risk of having applications publish stories without your approval, which we covered in the last Facebook privacy guide, is being eliminated completely. However it’s important to understand what information applications can access. As Facebook writes, when you visit applications, they “may access any information you have made visible to Everyone as well as your publicly available information.” Publicly available information “includes your Name, Profile Picture, Gender, Current City, Networks, Friend List, and Pages.”
The more restrictive you make your profile settings, the less information that’s available to applications. While applications must follow your existing privacy settings, your friends can also share information about you within applications. An example would be a greeting card application which uses your birthday to prompt your friend to send a card. Facebook allows users to control the types of information that applications can access when your friends use an application that you have not previously installed.
You can control that information (as pictured to the right) by visiting this page.
8. Make Contact Information Private
I personally use Facebook for professional and personal use and it can frequently become overwhelming. That’s why I’ve taken the time to outline these ten privacy protection steps. Once I began approving friend requests from people that I hadn’t built strong relationships with, I immediately limited the visibility of my contact information so that only close friends could view things like my email and phone number.
If you post any of your personally identifiable information (phone number, email, or address) on your profile, it makes sense to limit who can see it. There are two ways to limit who can see your contact information. The first is to visit the contact privacy settings page. From there you can customize the contact settings as much as you’d like. As I previously wrote, for each contact item that you have in your profile, you should set custom privacy settings so that contacts who you aren’t close to don’t have access to your email and phone number.
The second way to customize your contact privacy settings is directly from your profile. Click on the “Info” tab in your profile and scroll down to the contact information section. Once you mouse over the contact area, you’ll have the option of editing the content. If you click on “Edit” you will notice little lock icons next to each piece of information (as pictured below). If you click on the lock you will be prompted with a box which says “Who can see this?” from which you can completely customize who your information is visible to.
9. Avoid Embarrassing Wall Posts
While you may have enjoyed getting wasted with your friends at the holiday party last night, it’s probably not something that you want everybody to know about. Your friends may not use Facebook for connecting with professional contacts, and as a result they don’t think twice about casually posting something that should be kept more private. As such, it makes sense to control what’s visible to others. There are two places where you can configure your wall privacy settings: directly from your profile page and from the profile privacy page.
In order to edit the privacy settings from your profile page, click on the “Options” link directly under the publisher. The image below shows how to control your settings in three easy steps. The most dramatic modification that you can make is unchecking the box which says “Friends may post to my wall”. Most users want to be able to communicate via the wall so disabling this functionality will prevent anyone from communicating publicly with you.
If you don’t want to take the most extreme step by blocking users from writing on your wall, you can customize who can view wall posts made by your friends by clicking on the drop down directly next to “Who can see posts made by my friends?” I recommend preventing all professional contacts from being able to view posts made by your friends.
10. Keep Friendships Private
Yes, I understand that you want the whole world to know that you are popular and have lots of friends! However, not all users want everybody knowing who their friends are and there are clear justifications for blocking others from seeing your Facebook friends. I’ve had a number of individuals visit my profile and then selectively pick off friends that are relevant to them for marketing purposes, or other reasons.
Voyeurism is a key component of Facebook and one of the most frequent activities of users is to browse through other users’ friends. Whatever the reason is, just know that users are doing it. While your friendships can show up in search engines, we’ve already highlighted how to make your profile invisible to search engines in number 3 above. If you want to take things one step further and prevent others from viewing your friends, you can follow these steps:
- Go to your profile page
- Click on the pencil icon in the top right corner of your “Friends” box
- Uncheck the box which says “Show my friends on my profile”
Now you’ve successfully hidden others from viewing your friends. Keep in mind that your friends list is accessible to any Facebook applications you use. It’s also possible for users to view your friends list if they have access to your username (Mark Zuckerberg’s friends list for example). My guess is that Facebook will eventually provide functionality to block users from seeing your friends completely.
Understand The New Privacy Settings
The New Publisher Settings
Yes, last night’s holiday party was a lot of fun but when you post on your friends walls (or your own) you can limit the visibility to just your friends. Configuring your privacy settings effectively is important, but even more important is the ability to use Facebook’s features in a way which avoids any negative repercussions. One of the most important features to roll out with the new privacy settings is the ability to publish content which is only visible to specific friends.
Rather than posting a status update that everybody can view, limit those friends who can access your information. The new content visibility settings are as follows: Everyone, Friends and Networks, Friends of Friends, Only Friends, and Customize. Understanding the new publisher settings is key to protecting your privacy on Facebook.
Note that the image below doesn’t include “Friends and Networks” as not all users have this option. You must be a member of a university or professional network in order to see the “Friends and Networks” setting.
Everyone Literally Means Everyone In The World
Yes, when you select “Everyone” on content that you publish, anybody on the internet will be able to view that content. When Facebook released the new privacy transition tool, the purpose was to get you to share more information with Facebook users, primarily the status updates and links that you are posting. If you are like most users, then you probably just accepted Facebook’s recommendations without thinking about it (if you didn’t accept, congratulations as you clearly understand Facebook privacy). The result of blindly going through the new privacy transition tool is that your status updates and other information is now publicly accessible by everyone on the internet.
If you don’t mind having your content published to everyone in the world by default, then you don’t need to worry about changing anything. I have a feeling that most users don’t prefer to have all their information publicly shared by default however. Instead, users want complete control over their privacy and they want to start their Facebook experience in a protected environment. While it’s possible to debate Facebook’s privacy philosophy, reading through this guide should help ensure that you continue to feel protected while using Facebook.
Update
We’ve also included a video below to help you understand Facebook’s new privacy settings.
One thing that irks me…if someone asks to be your friend, shouldn’t you be able to view their profile? Sometimes you’re not sure if you want to…but their profile will give you the reasons, one way or another. And the request should give you license.
thanks this helped
Great post, Neil! You do a great job explaining this so people can really understand it. You rock!
Hi Nick,
Nice balanced piece, except & just to let you know; Zuck has actually diverted his friend search back to his homepage! I suspect he’s worried about his privacy!
J
Hi..I don’t have this option to uncheck the box which says “Show my friends on my profile” for hiding friends..can you help?
Once again, the professionalism of FaceBook is showing itself.
Thank you Nick O’Neill for the e-mail article on the new FaceBook privacy settings.
I very much appreciated getting all this information clarified in simple-to-understand language.
Please pass on a thank you to all who played a part in making this happen.
A very satisfied FaceBook user,
~ Charles Stewart
It’s very annoying that you can no longer independently control who sees or who does not see your status updates without having to block them from many more wall features.
How can I hide my recent activity like commenting on friends posts and stuff by default ?! The new facebook settings simply sucks
Thank you for taking the time to post this!!
Actually, you can limit who sees your status, every time you update it. Click on the little lock before posting it to edit who can see the status update. Hope this helps you.
Thanks for clearing up the current confusion folks are having on facebook privacy changes.
Note added to friends profile box “Note: Your Friend List is always visible to Friends”… unchecking show my friends on my profile, only works in search not when friends viewing profile. No way to hide friends list from friends now - nice to see facebook changing privacy setting anyway they feel now on daily basis and now bothering to inform users.
I’m liking the new privacy controls, but was really (!!) surprised to find that the Pages we “friend” are not private and there’s no way to make them private. So, I can have all my information shielded from view…but by the Pages I’ve friended, people might be able to learn more about me than I’d prefer. That SUCKS!!
They just changed the privacy settings again… so yoru step 1 is obsolete already!!!! you cant hide your friends lists from your friends… check out the note they just added to the friends pencil box in your profile: “Note: Your Friend List is always visible to Friends”… No way to hide friends list from friends anymore!
thanks for this post!!!!
I can’t seem to get the “Hide Friends List” from my Profile working. I don’t see the option after I click the Pencil Icon. What gives?
Thanks for the update .. will have to read it carefully before adding any more comment tho ;D
Point #10 is not longer applicable. You can click the pencil button, unclick the check box that allows everyone from seeing your friends list but there is a note under that says That Friends will ALWAYS be able to see your friends list so if a person on your friends list wants to go through your friends list and acquire people from your list for marketing purposes, the only option right now is block that person.
Hi , while I did find somethings very useful ,thank you
I also know that the hiding of friends on facebook , the pencil thing where you unclick box that says shows friends in profile ,No longer is working ! Since yesterday I have asked ppl at work and friends and everyone has said not they do not have that option , their Option says Show friends to everyone ,and when they untick the box , friends can still see there friends list and so can friends of friends .
I have since taken my account off Facebook , To say it has better safety , It is plain to see that Facebook has maybe reached their peak at which they where able to handle . To come out with these settings , Yes we want privacy but the layout of this is the worst I have even seen
Thanks for taking the time to research and publish this. Really appreciate it!
Gow do the granular controls work on the iPhone app?
If I update my status from my iPhone, does it go out to all my friends, “everyone” or my default (which is certain friend’s lists)”?
Anyone?
Is there a way to now block when I accept a new friend from my news feed post on my wall?
I’m wondering the same thing about how to hide recent activity. I had it before, why am I not able to get it back? Or can I and I’m just not able to see it. Would really like to have my settings back the way they were.
GAH! Facebook changed the settings again. Tip #10 no longer works. They’ve now changed it to note that friends can always see your friends list. If you check the box then you can allow everyone to see your list.
Facebook no longer has the ’show my friends but not to others’ option. Very disappointing as it means either publicly displaying all my friends or not at all. They need to fix this. I like my privacy and don’t want to display my ties to the whole world. Simultaneously, I want to see my Friends box and am comfortable with my friends knowing who they are. The old system allowed for both options.
What I’d love to see Facebook offer is Moderated Wall Posts. Rather than simply offer Wall Postings or No Wall Posting it would also be nice if you could have the option of letting people post to your wall but then requiring those posts to by approved by you.
Most people still only are using Facebook for close friends and family but as Facebook becomes a tool to manage those “weak ties” relationships, a moderated wall feature will become more important.
On the options where you can either allow only certain people to see information, or block certain people (such as #4 and #8 in this list), it’s probably better to use a whitelist model (only people in certain friends lists can see it) than the blacklist model the article suggests (prevent people in certain friends lists from seeing it). Why? Suppose, as in #4 above, you don’t want professional colleagues to see pictures that other people have tagged of you. If you merely prevent people on your “Professional” friends list from seeing them, it’s possible that a new professional contact will send you a friend request…and you’ll absent-mindedly forget to add them to your “Professional” friends list when you accept their request, and then they can see the pictures tagged of you. If, on the other hand, you’ve set it up so only people on your “Buddies” friends list can see photos tagged of you, if you forget to add a new contact to a friends list when you add them as a friend, they won’t be able to see those pictures.
I absolutely hate the fact that every interaction I make shows up on other people’s live feeds. There’s no way to change those settings. If I log in for 2 seconds to quickly comment on someone’s status, it shows in everyone’s feed. THAT’s INSANE and a complete violation of privacy. I had emails I hadn’t gotten to yet, and many people I needed to get to, but didn’t have the chance to yet, and because I got on for one specific thing real quick, I’ve gotten deletes and gripes about non-responses… Facebook, you suck.
I hate the new version of privacy(?????)settings.I disabled my account.Bye bye.
Hate how they’ve implemented some privacy settings. You used to be able to block someone from seeing status updates, but they could still see other posts if you allowed.
Now, if you block them from seeing status updates, you block the entire wall? WTF?
The ability to not be able to control what gets posted to your feed is f’ed up too.
How is this giving users more control?
Thanks for the useful info in this update. I will have to go through my friends list now and put them on lists. Then I’ll have to update my privacy settings. I appreciate all your hard work for us!
It amazes me that Facebook will not let you display your relationship without forcing a news feed about a change in it. The relationship status is clumped in with other details. Nobody really cares if you add your cousin, but there’s clearly social repercussions for a change in relationship status.
In addition, Facebook made this claim when I was changing my search privacy, “There have been misleading rumors recently about Facebook indexing all your information on Google. This is not true. Facebook created public search listings in 2007 to enable people to search for your name and see a link to your Facebook profile. They will still only see a basic set of information.” This is a bold-faced lie. When I search my name + site:facebook.com, my phone number from one of these need-your-numbers groups is publicly displayed. I’ve since deleted it from the group, but Google has yet to get rid of it. In addition, comments I’ve made in some groups are now discoverable in search engine results. At least there is enough flexibility with the controls to lock down everything else, but I fear for those who do not know about this guide and similar guides.
I was wondering, if theres a way, i can hide how many friend i have on my Fb? cause i don’t want anyone to know how many friend i have even though they are my friend on fb..thanks.
Thanks so much! just wondering. is there a way to make your settings so private that you are virtually not there to anyone who isnt your friend?
I have had to de-friend my pages in order to keep my privacy. Sad for a few very important ones to me, perhaps you could fix this next.
Soooo….how do I make it so that people cannot click on me and “add me as a friend”. I had it set like that before and now all of a sudden I am getting unwanted friend requests!!!! HELP!
Thanks so much for this - very helpful. I’ve posted it on my wall and sent it to my professional colleagues, also.
Can you please explain the Live Feed v. News Feed thing?! Thank you! kjo
Unfortunately - “10. Keep Friendships Private” needs to be updated.
If you click on the little pencil tool next to your friends list you’ll notice that facebook has added a few new lines of really important information:
“Note: Your Friend List is always visible to Friends”
Conclusion, at the moment it is impossible to hide your friends list from friends.
Great tips - going to try them now.
thanks from tony
Cool site you’ve got here! I never new about this site, but it’s cool to have a site all about Facebook, and these are some great tips.
Did you know that Facebook has quietly snuck in a privacy change that can drastically affect your business and /or personal life?
Check it out: the change is, now, ALL of your people on Friends list can see ALL of the other people on your Friends list. This INCLUDES those Friends whom you had put on your “Limited Profile” list. They too can now see who is on your Friends list. There is no way around this. If you click on the pencil/edit icon for your Friends box while editting your Profile, and you uncheck the box “Show Friend List to everyone” there, you will notice that it also says in smaller print:
“Note: Your Friend List is always visible to Friends” .
In the past, I have been able to hide certain groups of friends from seeing the rest of my friends list, for personal and business reasons. Now, that is no more. Let’s get this word out!
I long ago removed myself from the API / Facebook Platform, to prevent 3d-party apps from having access to all my personal info.
Now that option has been taken away, and I guess I’ve been forced back onto the FB Platform against my will.
Anything I can do about this?
Excellent explanation. Always needed something like this to understand how facebook security affects what others see. Great resource.
Oh loving all the things you wrote. I believe in that too.
Here’s my take on facebook.
http://www.juwitajalil.com/2009/03/13/facebook/
Thank you for sending this. I do have one question…before the new settings when I would click on the Like button it would not show up on my wall. Now, each time I click it, it shows up. How can I disable the like feature from posting on my wall? Hope this made since..
Thanks
unfortunately some of my friends are deactivating their facebook account and they are really upset about facebook. Facebook can’t force people to have their friend list visible to all friends. This is an open door for stalkers and serial killers. They should let people control their privacy
and settings… unfortunately i have also deactivated my facebook account. bye bye
Hey… how to hide my recent activity; commenting on friends posts, likes, etc..??
Can we with this new facebook settings?? :((
I hate to de friend all the farmville, farkle and mafia friends but i find the posts annoying and time consuming… anyway to choose not to see how my friends are wasting their time? Just not interested. thanks
I am annoyed with all the new friend requests that I’m receiving since I can only select “Everyone” or “Friend of Friends” in response to Who Can Add you as a friend. In prior version, I could choose to have no one be able to add me as a friend… Very concerned about htis so I have deactivated my account.
Maybe my age is showing here, but it absolutely amazes me that there are so many complaints and negative comments about a complex and evolving service - that made readily available at our fingertips - specifically for our recreation and pleasure - FOR FREE! Come ON, people!
Question about Step 7/”What your friends can share about you through applications and websites”.
>>Does checking the box mean you are or are not protected? The FB site doesn’t tell you, and it wasn’t clear to me from this guide, either.
I hate that you can’t restrict who sees your friend lists. I am glad to know I am not alone. I emailed a complaint to FB.
Thanks for the guide.
Really helpful post.
However, the “EVERYONE” setting is confusing and I’m not sure this article has it right.
At the current time, Facebook hasn’t made personal profile wall posts (even if it was on the “Everyone” setting”) available to Google.
And you *have* to be logged into Facebook to see someone’s wall postings even if they set it on Everyone.
For example, the direct link to my personal profile wall is:
http://www.facebook.com/GeorgeKao?v=wall
Try logging out of Facebook, and going to the link above — you *cannot* see my wall postings even though those postings are set to privacy level of “Everyone”.
So “Everyone” does NOT literally mean everyone on the internet — it means Everyone Who Is Logged Into Facebook.
If you don’t agree with this statement, show me a way to see my wall postings withOUT being logged into a Facebook account.
Thanks.
Thank you for the update! I have shared this with my connections and hope they will utilize for their own personal profiles. As a web solutions provider by trade, the recent privacy and seemingly forced “total transparency” is offensive. What happened to giving people the choice? If they want to share every part of their life with the world, that’s their personal risk. BUT, by default, shouldn’t personal accounts be hidden and given the options to open up what they’d like to share with their personal vs professional contacts? The simple fact that many have brought up in previous comments relating to how a user’s “recent activity” is no longer manageable is now completely visible is beyond me. Literally everything you do on Facebook is now visible on your wall and stream. Comment on a photo? Like a status update? Join a group? Fan a page? Add a new friend? YES! Everything… complete with links! With that, the line is being increasing blurred between personal and professional. What happened to safety, security and privacy rights? Seems they are being taken away bit by bit.
Is there a way of making your profile picture NOT visible when people search you, who arent already your friends (like before)? Or can everyone see it now?
I wasn’t clear about the tagging - anyone can tag any photo on Facebook with my name whether or not it’s authentic. Would setting “Photos and Videos of Me” to “Private” render *someone else’s* me-tagged photo invisible to its owner and only visible to me?
This is very important info and I think people definitely need to know how to protect themselves, but do you have info for people who use FB for marketing purposes? How do you protect yourself and still not kill your marketing efforts?
Thanks.
Thanks for the helpful information. I found your first “Ten Things” very helpful my first time too. I still have one thing I can’t find a way around, and wonder if there is one you may know of. When a friend posts a status message, with my current settings, I can comment on it, and that fact isn’t published on my profile. Yet, if I only click “like”, it is published there (basically telling the world everyone who’s posts I’ve read or interacted with). I don’t want my whole friends list knowing everything I chose to “like”, but can’t find a way to keep this from being posted to my profile. Any clue? I would certainly appreciate it. Thanks again, Ben
Another question about point 7 above. Why would I want applications to access this information, or not?
How do I keep the updates off of my wall when I join a fan page or like one of my friends status’? Is there a way to keep all that off of my wall?
Finally i asked myself do i need this “FACEBOOK”, cosidering my privacy is invaded slowly by restricting and controlling and harassing me through ” PRIVACY SETTING”,
NOT VERY CLEARLY EXPLAINED.
Lisa, check your settings, even with the new privacy update, I maintained my privacy.
Nothing shows up on my wall/stream…besides my status updates and photos I add / am tagged in. NONE of the following shows up on my wall:
If I write on someones wall, “like” a photo, comment on a photo, join a group, or become friends with someone.
Something the author did not address is how to remove what pages you are a fan of from being seen by everyone.
any idea Nick??
Hi All,
I work in high risk countries doing security. I have many friends and work colleges on my FB. I used the old security setting to keep my other colleges safe from prying eyes. Due to the new FB settings I can’t keep peoples anonymity on my account and as a result I have deactivated my FB account.
Security Settings lol What security, Stay safe people and look after yourself, as from what I see FB wont.
hi , my friend’s list is always displyed on my facebook even after following what is writen on 10
in fact on the profile page when I Click on the pencil icon in the top right corner of my “Friends” box and Uncheck the box which says “Show my friends on my profile” it’s only hiden from me and in theis bow we can notice the note :
Note: Your Friend List is always visible to Friends
I still have a huge issue with the fact that my friends are no longer private. I use FB as a network tool for work apart from my private side, and I am absolutely SHOCKED that I can’t protect my own network. Now all of a sudden everyone in my network can see everyone else… in todays world business is done via networking. What is the point now if you can simply see everyones network? My network had actual value before hand, it was people who I had contacted and amassed over a period of time, at my energy and cost. Now it means nothing, some joe soap in my network can see my entire database (which the friends list is) and access it. I’ve written my contacts down and de-activated my fb account now (fb is one user less), and will remain in email contact until FB re-installs the right to protect your own database of friends.
Hi,
My wallposts to my friends used to appear in the News Feed almost immediately after i posted them, however since the new version of privacy settings, they do not appear in the News Feed. How can i change the settings so that if i post something onto a friends wall, it then appears in the News Feed for all my friends to see.
I think the new facebook privacy settings does not have the option of changing which information appears in the News Feed e.g. wallposts, relationship status etc or does it?
I would really appreciate your help.
I personally think that facebook is nearing the “tipping point” where it is more of a pain to stay on facebook and deal with all the idiotic changes vs. leave facebook forever.
I don’t want people out of my friends list to see my profile pic ,I tried changing that by going to the privacy setting , my photo albums , prfile picture and I chnaged the setting of my profile picture to be seen by “only friends” when i preview my profile as ” everyone ” or ” friend of frend” could see my profile pic!!! Can anyone help me here
What the hell is facebook thinking?? How can they say this is an improvement to my privacy and security when, there is no way of making my profile private or even my PROFILE PICTURE which anyone can copy and paste. I do not want random people to be able to see me and especially add me as a friend. Is there anyway at all around this??
Thanks Nick,
This is going to help for our upcoming branch into facebook for an app. See you tonight!
Thanks for the post.
Many people get that wrong. What personally put me off the most is the annoying popup that forces me to think about those changes in a moment when I just want to get something done quickly.
Yours
John
“If you want to take things one step further and prevent others from viewing your friends, you can follow these steps:
1.Go to your profile page
2.Click on the pencil icon in the top right corner of your “Friends” box
3.Uncheck the box which says “Show my friends on my profile”
Now you’ve successfully hidden others from viewing your friends.”
In actual fact, by following these steps, all I have succeeded in doing, is blocking my OWN view of my friends!!!
I had previously set goups/lists within my main friends list, as advised. This was simply to protect myself and my family from people I had only just met - or ‘networked with’ on facebook. This group of new networked friends I set to ‘block’ from viewing my friends - for a good reason!!!
Prior to changing my settings - I had one networked friend who thought it was ‘fair game’ to systematically go through my friends list adding my girlfriends and asking EVERYONE of them for their phone numbers!!! Everyone assumed as a friend of mine, that I knew him!!!!
If you go into settings, you can type in a name of a friend and view your profile *as they would see it* … and that is how I know that my full friend list is visible to EVERYONE - because the group I would prefer to block - have FULL VIEW!!!
My biggest concern is for the vulnerable on facebook - children and those that may now be at risk of being stalked. See my notes for a full and comprehensive list of laws across the US, Canada, Australia and the Uk - regarding electronic harassment and cyber stalking.
Its a crime that unless our privacy settings are restored - facebook is aiding and abetting…
why not add the functionality to hide the number and list of friends on the profile page not only from everyone, but also from friends and friends of friends. Presently, it is still possible to circumvent privacy settings via the account of others. This choice would also eliminate voyeurism.
awesome job, you put alot of work into this.
clicked on your “Mark Zuckerberg’s friends list” link & no longer see a way to see all the friends (only mutual friends)… am i missing something? or is there once again a way to make one’s friend list private?
his groups are visible but not his friends. please tell me fb backed off of friend lists being visible, as they should. visible groups should be optional too.
This is so helpful. I have a Facebook account but I never post there, partly because I was concerned about privacy issues. I’m going to go through and tweak my settings now.
is there a way yet to prevent certain people from seeing SPECIFIC tagged photos?
or is it and ALL or NOTHING with friend lists?
I agree with Diablo who said:
“Hate how they’ve implemented some privacy settings. You used to be able to block someone from seeing status updates, but they could still see other posts if you allowed.
Now, if you block them from seeing status updates, you block the entire wall? WTF?”
How come we can no longer control who sees the status updates without hiding the entire wall!!! I know you can control each post, but controlling post by post is not an option if you update from other sources, such as an iPhone or TweetDeck! FIX THIS!
@Paoloa, make one update ON facebook. Choose customize, block that one person (or people) and check the “make default” box. That means everything you post, unless you change the setting for that one thing, will always block those people. But they will still be able to see the other parts of your wall.
Hi,
Do anyone know how to i block certain friends from seeing my friend list? I can’t seem to be able to set it. please help
thanks
hi..i dont like new setings because now my profile picture is visible to everyone..how can i hide dat?and i dont like tht if a friend ov mine likes my pic all his friends can see my pic in ther hom page.plz guide me
Hey …
How do i keep from my wallposts on my friends’ walls appearing on everyone’s news feed ….
my question never got answered either. Any attorneys out there who want a good “breach of trust” suit ?
I hate the new FB and it’s not private at all, as an avid user I’m totally disappointed in the new settings, nothing about it is private, I don’t like everyone who is on my page seeing my activity, this tutorial did not help at all, I don’t like ppl following my daily activity, please consider changing it back!
I hate the new FB and it’s not private at all, as an avid user I’m totally disappointed in the new settings, nothing about it is private, I don’t like everyone who is on my page seeing my activity, this tutorial did not help at all, I don’t like ppl following my daily activity, please consider changing it back!
Facebook’s inability to provide desired service and constant flip-flopping is what is/will send people to Twitter! http://bit.ly/DXGDE
hi,
i have a question, before facebook changed the privacy settings, there is a “newsfeed” settings under the main settings area, and now it disappeared. I don’t want my posting to my friends wall to be published and shown on the lives feed/ news feed, HOW DO I DO THAT?
(there used to be a complete control of which info you post will appear on the feed, but now they are completely gone)
really hating all these new privacy settings,….
aishwarya, it’s not possible to stop wall posts appearing in mutual friend’s news feeds; this option used to be available to check or uncheck before the new privacy setting were brought in and I had it unchecked because I don’t want everyone reading what I write. I wrote on my sister’s wall and everyone else was able to read it. Nice one Facebook.
Above (see number 10) you said that we had the opportunity to keep our friends private (or hidden). This was true til today it appears (Dec 23, 09). You say..
you can follow these steps:
Go to your profile page Click on the pencil icon in the top right corner of your “Friends” box
Uncheck the box which says “Show my friends on my profile”
This is no longer true, all my friends can now see all my friends. I don’t like how it is now. Please advise.
Hmmmm it used to be that ,with the previous privacy settings,when i post on a friend’s wall it doesnt appear on the feed of our mutual friends.. but now i can’t seem to choose that option anymore.
Help pls.
i agree with
“aishwarya - December 23rd, 2009 at 2:41 am
Hey …
How do i keep from my wallposts on my friends’ walls appearing on everyone’s news feed ….”
when i comment on someones wall, i dont want it posted to everyone in their live feeds!
Thanks, but it’s sad that you have to do this.
@ BOSSS ~~What you mentioned is exactly what I’ve been hoping to find how to set, stopping FB from posting my every action and comment to my profile. How do you set it not to post all that? there are several comments here from people who are also looking for an answer to that.
As of recently, everything I do shows up on my profile. Commenting on statuses, liking photos, and even new friend additions. I had this feature turned off prior to the changes that were made recently but I see that we no longer have the ability to control this. Is there anything we can do about this?
How do i block what i post on other wall from going onto my news feed???
The recent activity posts are really annoying.
To suddenly make this public with no notice and no option to block is poor form and now limits my use of FB
They are horrible now. They took away our News Feed/Wall Privacy Settings and now every tiny thing we do pops up on my wall and news feed. Even now comments i leave on other people’s walls pops up in the news feed when I had that set to private before. Facebook is messing up big time.
There is nothing private. I spent some time creating lists of friends. I spent some time setting application permissions. However, that all seems to be irrelevant at this point. I don’t like having every comment that I make, every status update that I like, every page that I become a fan of being immediately viewed by all of my friends. And furthermore, they probably don’t really care either! There should be a way for ME to control the flow of that information and not put the burden on my friends.
All I’m trying to figure out - which I didn’t find here, is how can i post to a friends wall without it being made into a public newscast on the wall of every friend. If i go on a girls page and say “Hey cutie what’s up?” on her wall, i don’t want that going into the news feed!!!
?!?!?!
I only have one important question that is driving me crazy: We used to be able to make it so that when we post to someone else’s page it doesn’t show up in the news feed, (just like when we change our relationship status, etc.). Now, with these new changes, it seems EVERYTHING I post to others pages shows up in the news feed, and I can’t find anywhere to shut this off (and no one else can either). HELP! I do not want everything I post on other’s pages going out into the universe!!! Thanks in advance.
Ok, noticing everyone is having the same exact problem. Nice job facebook. Hopefully they can take a hint.
i’ve been keeping two pages open, and every time i post a comment, like, etc, i refresh the one page and delete those entries from my profile, what a mess. but am wondering, does deleting them from my page stop them from being visible to every tom dick an hairy?
i’m beginning to believe i should look elsewhere for an answer to my questions
Is someone at Facebook actually reading these commnents?? I am pretty disgusted with Facebook these days. My girlfriend and I went through a break up recently, I changed my status to complicated and now we are gratefully working things out. WHY does eveyone on Facebook have to know my business. Also is it really necessary to see who joined what fanclub or who commented on who’s pa?? This is NOT private at all. Why fix something that was not broke. Is this a punishment because people are threatening to leave if facebook decides to charge for thier services? Change it back please!
Ready to deactivate!!!!
Hi Nick,
Just wondering if there is still the option to prevent my conversations (wall posts) appearing on all my friends News Feeds, after me posting a simple message on a friend’s profile because i’m not fond of ALL my friends seeing what i’ve said to one person, unless they view that profile and stumble upon that message.. ?
Just seen a comment by Crystal, sorry for the agro with an almost identical question, but it seems i’m not the only one with this problem huh..
cool
Agreed.. Recent activity showing is super annoying.. Any idea how we can take this off?
Any chance of an updated version?
Especially on how to stop posting activity such as: things you like, wall posts on friend’s walls, comments on wall posts - has facebook really removed the option not to post these?
I don’t see many other friends have these notifications on their walls… Any advice you have on how to remove would be much appreciated!!!
I just do not understand how everyone has the same question, yet nothing is being answered…I used to be able to block (on my wall) That I a: commented on someone’s status, b: liked a status, c: joined a group, d: now friends with . . . Why is this now all of a sudden showing up??? I noticed in the Settings - Privacy there is no longer an option to Choose Wall Settings. Everything BUT that. Why the hell would FB take this away? Is there something we are ALL missing? Or do I seriously, manually have to DELETE it off MY WALL everytime I do something? We all know what we do, and that others will b e able to see it, but why have to have it right out there in the open?? UGH SO ANNOYED.
ok all this has been really helpful so thanks. i just need some clarification on how to make your profile picture, friends, and pages unviewable. For some reason i am not able to change my friend settings like number 10 suggests…any suggestions?
trying to make my settings work for me… what a headache. I am mad because they revealed my age.
Regardless of your profile privacy settings, Facebook will still show your “Pages” in how your profile looks to most people on Facebook. You can verify this with the preview button on the top right after clicking on Privacy Settings -> Profile Information.
Among the many options you can control, Pages, for whatever absurd reason, isn’t there for you to control, and clicking on the preview you will realize that it will always be shown.
Not letting you control that is a privacy violation, if you asked me.
With the new features you simply can’t control who sees the Pages you are a fan of. Everyone will be able to see those on your profile, regardless of what privacy settings you choose. You can verify this after clicking on Settings -> Privacy Settings -> Profile Information, then using the preview button after you set your preferences.
In my opinion, not allowing you to control who sees the Pages you are a fan of is sort of a privacy violation. Hopefully Facebook will eventually change this.
I don’t know what I did but now when I go into my facebook page I have to shut down my computer to get offline and off of facebook Is there a setting I have to change? How do I change it?
Agreed with domforth above. I dont want my friends to see what i posted on other people’s walls/pictures/etc. There used to be a setting for that. What happened?
due 2 facebook privacy being totally UNprivate to the world i have de-activated.
i do not want strangers being able 2 search 4 me and see my photo. also news feed showing all my activity
FRIENDS CAN STILL SEE MY FRIENDS LIST
I can’t follow the instructions about Keeping Friends Private from other friends as you described in point 10.
This is because the display you describe doesn’t exist when I click on the pencil icon in the Friends box on my profile page.
Instead this is all I get:
Show friends
Show friend list to everyone
Note: Your Friend List is always visible to you and your friends
Always show these friends:
That’s it. I have no option to ‘Show friends on profile’ or not.
What’s going on here? anyone?
Thank you for the tips, they are helpful. One thing though: before last privacy changes I was unavailable for friends of friends. Now they can send me invitations, and on settings, there are only two options: friends of friends and everyone. Is there a way around this?
Thank you again!
HELP! This is a wonderful guide, but I still have a questions. I just uploaded an album and set it so that 8 of my friends can see it. I then clicked on the “publish to wall” button and it shows up on my page. Can anyone now see or access it? I deleted it cause I was not sure. WIll it be invisible to those who I did not specify can see it?
The new Facebook privacy settings make it difficult to hide your Facebook friend lists when using different browsers. For example, non-Facebook friends/strangers can see the full list of friends (by clicking on view all) when using Internet Explorer. However, when using Firefox they can see only mutual friends.
I followed the guidelines on how to make my friend list private (going to the pencil icon and unchecking “show my friends on my profile”). However, despite the measures I’ve taken, there’s a glitch as different browsers will enable strangers/marketers/non-Facebook friends to view my full friend list. My preference is to make my friend list visible only to Facebook friends. That option is no longer possible so the next best thing is to make it visible only to friends.
Do you have recommendations on what I can do? Or better yet, is there anyway to get Facebook to address this failure in its system? It gives you a false sense of privacy, and at the end of the day, the privacy settings we choose should hold regardless of the browser being used.
In addition, I reviewed the post on the “10 New Privacy Setting Every Facebook User Should Know.” It appears that Facebook has changed some things since your post. The “Only Me” option is no longer available for some settings (for example, the Family and Relationships setting). In addition, I had the setting for Add Me As Friend at “Only Me” or “Friends Only” (can’t remember which). I was playing around and changed it to Friends of Friends – I now want to go back to my original “Only Me” or “Friends Only” setting but this is no longer possible. Any recommendations on what I can do? I don’t want to keep getting requests from people I barely know – I feel that Facebook is forcing me to be more public than I want to be. I want to use Facebook to socialize with people I have established relationships with. It’s now forcing me to either accept requests from people I barely know or alienate them by ignoring their request. Again, how can one follow up with Facebook on this issue?
Read the comments man, they’ve deactivated that option.
Some businesses rely on distributors not being able to find suppliers, this information asymmetry is the heart of many ‘agency’ industries.
If I have both my distributors and suppliers on my list, and they can contact each other, I’m screwed.
I was forced to deactivate my account and will be emailing them about it.
This is stupid, but if it really affects you like it affects me, you will deactivate your account and email them.
Good luck!
Adam I’ll tell you what’s going on.
Facebook has effectively ruined the entire Privacy System in order to appear ‘user-friendly’ to new users in places like China, Brazil ,etc.
Im not sure how ‘users get more control’ works now. Facebook, you simply SUCK and are in the process of ruining relationships, friendships, business dealings, etc.
PLEASE Fix this ASAP before the Facebook Empire crumbles like Rome did.
Hi, I am wondering how I can entirely delete my facebook wall. I have made all of my settings private so that my friends can no longer post to my wall or see new posts but they can still see all of the old ones from the past few years? Is there a way to change that?? Thanks!
hi. is there a way, that i can “unview” a certain person’s posts or live feed? she literally posts nonsense every 5minutes, which is very irritating. I don’t want to see her face evry time I check the live feed.
please please. i badly need this. thanks.
I agree with all the users who are upset about an all-or-nothing access to the wall through status updates. This needs to be fixed. I like to give family friends access to my wall without giving them an inside look into my status updates.
PLEASE FIX THIS!
@anne
MAN I KNOW–you just get sick of bein bulls***ed with stupidity
next time you see her post something, move your mouse around to the upper right corner of her post. you should see a little button appear that says
“hide [so and so]”
then click it. after that all of her posts wont appear. thats one thing that f***book kept when they changed all this so called privacy settings to make it better.
Eventhough facebook is trying to fix some of the privacy issues and make their privacy rules more robust, there are still many problems, alot of my friends started to take off some of their information, and keep a low profile on facebook. There are lots of excellent questions and problem solutions here http://www.similarproblem.com/3/75/76.
Now that we’ve all came to grips with knowing every comment we make, and every post we click *likes* on, is being streamed to the world live, via FB new “privacy policy”, at least it won’t be such a shock, that soon, all FB emails will be considered their personal property and posted straight to google, and all private chat conversations will be streamed live to Twitter. At least the “delete account” function still seems to be working. That is, it is working at present, but since the TOS we agreed to in the past, changes faster than you can read it, and anything linked to on FB is in their grasp, I hope you didn’t post your phone number, as this will allow all telephone conversations to be streamed *live* to youtube, or sold to the highest bidder.
Thanks for this very pedagogical guide.
There are 2 things that I still cannot accomplish. Is there a way to:
1) Select inside a photo album that is visible to “friends of friends” a few photos that should be visible to “only friends” or only a few people?
2) I use “friends of friends” on albums because I want my sister’s friends to see our common photo albums. However I don’t want my other friends’s friends to see them. Is there a way to be more granular?
Thanks,
Julian
Hello Everybody.
now all friends previously posted in the “LIMITED PROFILE” can see all your friends (before they did not see any friend list!!!!!!)
i’ve followed all rules in the guide but is not enough. could anyone confirm me that? is possible to fix it or NOT???? thankssss!!!
If one of your friends comments on your status update, it creates a link on your friend’s wall that all of your friend’s friends can click on to read YOUR status, even though you may have your page set to friends only.
That is TERRIBLE. If I wanted my friends of friends to be able to see my status updates, I’d make my page “friends of friends.”
Facebook really screwed up with this update, and I know so many people who are deactivating their accounts because of nonsense like this.
Is it possible to see which friends have viewed my profile each day?
any one can see my frinde list any one and when i unmark the it(make the frinde list unvisible ) nothing happen !!!
what shude i do ?????
Thanks, I couldn’t figure out how to restrict friends from being visible.
It seems to me that it would be good to have a view of lists and what can be seen or not by that list.
Having it from the other end i.e. seeing what COULD be seen and then specifying lists to that view is daft in my eyes
Thanks for this really appreciate you sharing!
Keep up the great work
Regards
Michelle
I hate how your profile isn’t completely private anymore now. People can see my picture and my fans, that sucks.
I meant “Pages I’m fan of”.
after all this has been said…anyone on here want to be friends?!!
=))))
How do I prevent others (anyone!), especially in random profile views/searches, from seeing the pages I’m a fan of, or the groups to which I subscribe? Also, how do I control what info pops up when I’m on someone else’s friend list? That is, in looking through my friends’ friends, my status updates and networks appear to the world. Help!
wait how do i install this new version of facebook?
I have a question, How can I hide my recent activity like commenting on friends posts, writing on their wall, liking a photo etc. I want to make this invisible to others. With the new settings, my wall fills up with this. How can I change it?
1. How can i hide my friends list from my other friends? That was possible with the previous changing on FB.
2. How can i hide my pages from people that are not my friends, which was also possible… ???
3. How can i hide my recent activities from my wall???
Thank you.
This is still no good.
I shouldn’t have to go in and tweek settings to make sure a casual comment to one of my friends is not seen by all of our friends. That’s ridiculous and never an issue on Myspace. And how annoying and tedius is that to have to select individual friends that you don’t want to see wall posts. Just don’t have that there! I posted a joke that was something that you’d “have to be there” to get to one of my friends walls. He got it, I got it.. but everybody else in our friends list didn’t get it and misunderstood it. So I had to explain myself. What a pain facebook is.
How do I change it so that noone can view my friends list? these options just simply arent there on my privacy settings page
thank you for your share.. but there’s something that bugs me.. i need to know how to hide my recent activity on my wallpage.. i tried to go all over the setting, and i cant seem to find the way to hide it beside i have to remove it one by one…
do you have solution for this? or does fb deactivate this setting?!
Thank you for this useful information. I would like to know how I could hide the date and time of my posts and comments. I am pretty sure that I have seen this option somewhere, but now I can’t find it. Can you help me with this? Thank you again!
Sadly, none of these suggestions protect you from your friends’ ignorance.
If a friend has a public wall, and comments on one of your photos, status updates, or links, then a link to that content is made public on their wall. This therefore bypasses any privacy settings you have set-up. This back-door is worse with photos, because Facebook always provides a link back to the album regardless.
More here: http://blog.benpowell.co.uk/2009/12/facebook-shares-private-information-via.html
FB screwed me. I have an RO against my bio father and because FB suddenly made everything ‘open’ he found me and sent me messages. I have reported it as unwanted contact, and blocked him now, but the point is: I was hidden, and now, I have no choice but to delete my FB and start over, making up a fake name.
nice to read full article but i want to know that i dont want to publish link when i write on another person wall. example i write something on my friend wall and comment or a photo but i dont want to publish this one is own my wall..
Great post, but the new changes suck. I hate that I can no longer keep my friends list hidden from my friends - it used to be easy to do that using a limited profile. Hopefully FB will wake up & give us back the privacy options that they’ve just removed.
Thanks for your post! Very Enlightening.
How can one control who can WRITES on his/her wall though? This feature, if available, seems to resolve certain situations best.
WHILE EVERYONE THINK THAT FACEBOOK IS FREE OF CHARGE, IT IS NOT INDEED CZ AS SIMPLE AS IT IS, THEY R JUST COLLECTING DATA FROM EACH ONE OF US , IT BECAME AFTER A WHILE A HUGE WORLDWIDE DATA BASE SO THEY CAN SELL IT TO MANY INTERESTED COMPANY, GOVERNMENT, OR MAIL LIST. IN A SHORT CONCLUSION, INTERNET ITSELF IS A VIOLATION OF INDIVIDUAL PRIVACY, AND WE R ALL INVOLVED IN THAT SHIT, WHEN WE REALLY NEED PRIVACY WE MUST USE THE MINIMUM SHOW OFF ON THE NET AND USE SIMPLY A WRONG NAME, WRONG PICTURE AND WRONG INFOS, AND JUST USE IT IT FOR FUN.
i dont like friends to know that i added a new friend….how can i set this privacy ?…can anyone help ?
because i have a propensity for shrouding myself in unnecessary mystery, I need to know how to hide my friend list from everyone. People who are not my friend cant see very much but i dont like the fact that my friends can see who i AM and who I have NOT decided to keep as friends, it bothers me and I need a solution. mean just because I was friends with you in high school doesnt mean I give a shit now, it’s been like 8 years i dont care what you are up to now. There are plenty of instructions on how to do this on the old facebook setting, but nothing seems to work now that facebook has decided to beef up it’s privacy settings. how does that make any sense anyhow- more privacy but with stupider options?? can someone help me thanks!!!!
because i have a propensity for shrouding myself in unnecessary mystery, I need to know how to hide my friend list from everyone. People who are not my friend cant see very much but i dont like the fact that my friends can see who i AM and who I have NOT decided to keep as friends, it bothers me and I need a solution. I mean just because I was friends with you in high school doesnt mean I give a shit now, it’s been like 8 years i dont care what you are up to now. There are plenty of instructions on how to do this on the old facebook setting, but nothing seems to work now that facebook has decided to beef up it’s privacy settings. how does that make any sense anyhow- more privacy but with stupider options?? can someone help me thanks!!!
Thanks for the tips.
One thing I have noticed:
Your own settings may be nice and tight. (i.e. only friends allowed to see your profile, only friends allowed to search for you).
However, you may be friends with someone who lets “everyone” see all of his/her friends.
In such a case, a random person who is **not** your friend, and not your friends friend either, can still see your limited public profile, and can request to add you on as a friend.
For this reason, I have decided to deactivate my Facebook account until the next round of security updates.
Someone has added me as a ‘friend’ on facebook. If I don’t add them, it will offend them greatly. However if I do add them it will offend another few ‘friends’. Family politics!
Can I add this friend but make the fact they are my friend and any comments they ever make on my page photos etc invisible to everyone else?
i am extremely irritated, i dont want people to see that i have added …… as a friend or that i posted on a photo or wall. it means that every friend i have can see everything i do. WHAT THE FUCK???!?!?!?!?
LET ME TELL YOU SOME CONTROL THAT FACEBOOK IS SO IGGNORANT ABOUT TO THINk OF …TELL ME HOW TO BLOCK ONE PARTICULAR FRIEND SEEING ANOTHER PARTICULAR FRIENDS POST … OR BLOCKING ONE FRIENds LIST SEEING ANOTHER FRIENDS LISTS POST …. SO U DONT HAVE TO BLOCK UR CO-WORKERS FROM NOT SEEING YOUR POSTS FROM FRIEND … AND THEY WILL ONLY SEE OTHER CO-WORKRS Posts..pathetic …
i cant do anything on facebook. i want to comment on friends status, photos, etc., BUT IT’LL SHOW ON NEWS FEED!!!
I don’t understand why when you put someone on the list to make it unable for them to view other people’s wall posts to your wall, they can no longer post to your wall. Can someone explain this to me? Am I doing something wrong?
Thanks for a very informative explanation of Facebook’s changes. I went to privacy settings and thought I had made the necessary changes.
I still have a problem with posts and friendships being posted as “News Feed”. In fact someone responded negatively to a group I joined yesterday! It was none of their business! What do I do???
If I do the 9th option, this is what happens.
So My wall is not visible to be written on for my ‘certain friends’ if I have these 2 options selected in Privacy settings->profile information
1. Allow friends to post on my wall is checked
2. The ‘Posts by friends’ is set to a custom set of people.
3. The ‘Posts by me’ is set to ‘only friends’.
In this case my wall is visible to be written on, only to those custom set of people weirdly and the rest who I marked above as ‘cant c the posts by my friends’ are not able to write on my wall ??
My aim is to show my wall to ‘only my friends’ and also ‘allow all my friends to post to my wall’ but the posts posted by my friends to my wall should only be visible to a ‘custom set of friends’ ( including the person who of course posted it on my wall ).
in effect, I don’t want all my friends to see all my posts in my wall ( those posts posted by my other friends) . Am I doing something wrong ?
Appreciate your thoughts on this !
i think its a great site but really o u what to change it ALL SO NOW ONE CAN SEE IT then you fill a bit like you cant do any thing and its like your parents locking you away and not being able to go out its like that but your like all protectedd and stuff like i have facebook and i have none what was on that vidoe but its just some people need just to be carful on who they add and talk to so it isnt the site its them who diside to talk to them and be unsfe if you cant go on chat sites becouse your unsafe you shont be on there and sorry the message is a bit to long but thanks for reading
:) be safe
There is a way to get rid of your Recent Activity. After you’ve done something like made a comment, added a friend, etc., find the announcement in Recent Activity and immediately delete it. To delete it, hold cursor over the listing and a “remove” button shows up. The only people who will see the Recent Activity listing would be someone who saw it within the few seconds before you remove it. This is the best we can do so far.
Well written and much appreciated. It’s nice to have this so clearly and easily spelled out so that I can share this with the less than tech savvy friends and family in my life who use FB, but may not know how much of their private information they’re putting out online.
I was less than impressed with FB’s choice on defaults for user privacy settings. I think it should always default to private, then educate the user on how to modify into sharing. Despite what mainstream may think, it is every product or services job to educate users on how to use their product and privacy is just one of many aspects. Besides, there are SO many people who just aren’t aware of what they’re doing that it is the fault of the product if it doesn’t try or make it transparent/intuitive to protect one’s own privacy.
Sure, we can all self inflict via oversharing and that’s not something that a product can protect from. But aspects of what can be shared or in the case of FB, tagged, is a critical education and intuitive user design piece.
There is NO PRIVACY with Facebook. I am proof of it!
I did everything you suggested to do! My Facebook account is set to private, “friends only” and I had several friend lists etc… The creeps that took my information did it through a friends Facebook account and not through a third party application. They did it by hacking my friends account they stole her photos and her personal information then they acted like her and they copied and pasted my wall, profile and emails onto their sick hate group sites. How they did that I will never know because that friend did not have access to my photos and emails. Those creeps targeted us because we are a becoming a huge community in spreading awareness for our cause. They didn’t just take my information they took several of that friend’s friend’s information. We reported those creeks but they continue to reappear on Facebook. I have since deactivated my account and will wait until Facebook security gives me the “all clear” to reactivate my account. Regardless, I have learned to be Very Selective with the friends I confirm and the groups they join.
I was able to copy some pictures from a friends facebook account and mail them to a different friend who doesn’t have an account. They were nice pictures but if I can do it someone else can…. You’re right not all is safe.
Mark
I tried to do all of this and none of it worked. Can you tell me why?
It says that my friends list will always be visible to me and my friends. Is there anyway around this?
Account -> Privacy Settings -> Profile Information : When I click on Preview My Profile no friends are shown. I set this option with the old privacy settings. However, when I use the friends edit box, “Show Friends to Everyone” is unchecked (ans that’s ok), but there’s still the message: “Note: Your Friend List is always visible to you and your friends.” I wonder where the truth lies, and, if I want to change the setting in order to let my friends view my friends, how can I do it now, without showing my friends to everyone.
Thank you very much for this very useful and well writen guide.
I really want facebook to hear all the posts regarding returning the option to limit posts and updates from posting to other peoples newsfeeds. This is really obnoxious and I can’t believe that it is no longer and option.
ypu may have already addressed this, but I must have missed it. Everytime I post anything such as commenting on someones picture, become friends with, post on someones wall etc it shows up on everyones mini feed. Where is the setting change for this. I dont want it to show up on peoples mini feed everytime I do something. thanks
Interestingly, I have pretty much the opposite problem than many of you. Many here have the problem that whenever they “like” someone’s post or comment on a post, it shows up on the minifeed of friends, or friends of friends.
In my case, whatever I do, like a post, comment on a post, it will not show at all when I look at my profile from my friend’s account. And believe it or not, it is also irritating when its this way around. As the only thing that appears on my Wall is when I have become friends with another person or shared a comment of my own.
unblock me so i can add a friends.
I don’t think my quiery has been answered. It is in regards to tagged photos/videos. I am wondering if there is an option where if a person wishes to tag you in a photo they must request this and you must accept in order to be tagged. I don’t want all tagged photos to NOT be visible by all….just the horrible ones.
pls help me. i cannot login to my facebook account. i dont know why i cannot open it everytime i login. all website i visit is ok but not Facebook. pls help & teach me why i cannot login or open my account thanks.
I don’t want my non-facebook friends to see my profile picture. I used to be able to do this before they changed the settings. Is there any way that I can do this? Thanks.
These new privacy settings are AWFUL!!! They take away a lot of privacy that is needed just for “facebooks” benefit. They should not have taken the option of hiding your friend list away. This needs to be returned as an option! Very disappointed in facebook and will likely be deactivating my acct.
How do I advertise on facebook without a credit card?
hey,
is it true that - with the old privacy settings - it was possible to avoid that every friend of mine can see my whole friendlist and with the new privay settings its not possible any more?! This would mean to me that the previous privacy settings where better!
I absolutely loved this whole article it has helped me understand how this privacy thing works a lot better! Thank you so much!
Great info! just one stupid question, when you become fan of a group, Would the creater of that group able to access to you info, wall…?
Thanks people! well done!
MOST ANNOYING THING EVER: PUBLIC FEED.
I would REALLY love to know:
1. if i post a comment on a person’s wall, can someone who’s not friends with that person see my post? because it shows up on MY public feed.
2. any way to disengage public feed of my comments on other ppl’s walls???
I want to take myself right out of Facebook.. HOW do I do that ????
TO FIX the new ’show similar posts’, go To your Profile, click the button below “Share” and then click on Settings and then in the ‘Stories posted by friends’ section simply uncheck the “Combine Posts” box. That’s all there is to it. The posts will come back like they used to be. Pass it on since what you have done affects your posts only so it may take awhile for all to uncheck the box…
when is it going to be fixed so that the people that play games can see all posts without having to go into the similar posts section!?!
I don’t want my non-facebook friends to see my profile picture. I used to be able to do this before they changed the settings. Is there any way that I can do this? Thanks.
1. Besides going through them one at a time and deleting them from my wall, how can I hide my recent activity like commenting on friends posts or photos or walls by default? I had it set that way. Now?
How do I hide my friends list, physical location (city) and groups from showing up in a Facebook search? I want my name and profile picture to show up only. Why does this have to be so complicated? I understand that many different people want many different things from FB, but if there’s one thing Facebook excels at it’s making the simple complicated. It seems Facebook has created multiple places one has to go just to control privacy settings. keep them in one place.
i was wondering if anyone could help me..?
a while ago i changed some privacy settings on my facebook, so that my siblings, relationship info etc, cudnt b viewed. now i want to change the info, n put my boyfriends name in and my siblings names but when i do it, the new info doesnt come up. I dont know wat settings i changed and how to change them back?
If someone is a friend of my friend and can view their wall and friend’s list, even if my privacy settings are only for my friends…can they see that I’m on facebook?
I am implementing the “Keep Friendships Private” instruction you provided above, but I do not see the Step 3 below.
1. Go to your profile page
2. Click on the pencil icon in the top right corner of your “Friends” box
3. Uncheck the box which says “Show my friends on my profile”
There is only a ‘Delete Box’ option.
Help.
just a question re:7 Control What Information Applications Can Access. Do I click these off to restrict them from accessing this information about me or by clicking them off am I allowing them this access?
Thanks so much…
Jenn
Hi I need advice on how to get rid of a facebook profile link that features on my ‘info’ page. No matter what I try, I cannot get rid of it. All my privacy settings are set to friends only but the link remains visible to anyone accessing my profile. If I try to edit it out, it doesn’t show up for deleting and also doesn’t come up as an option under ‘Privacy’. Does anyone have anything similar? It seems pointless setting my profile to private if anyone can click on the this link and see my whole profile anyway!!It is found under Contact Information and is an http://www.facebook.com/ link. Please help!!!!!
how do i friendship with white girl? please tell
My privacy settings used be that people had to send me an email/message if they wanted to be my friend and then if i replied the add as friend option would come up. I can not do this anymore and I hate it, everyone just clicks add as friend and I am getting tons of requests that I don’t want and I don’t want to feel bad about it. I would rather someone had to write and say hi first as otherwise they add friends and don’t even bother talking to them. I also would love to know how you can turn yourself off the friend suggestion so you don’t pop up on others pages???
this site has helped me to keep pedos away from my profile thank you very much.
About your comment at the end “My guess is that Facebook will eventually provide functionality to block users from seeing your friends completely.”, I have to add this.
On May 1st 2010 Facebook quietly restored the settings to hide visibility of Friends. You can now make friends visible to “Everyone”, “Friends only”, “Friends of friends” and a new one: “Custom” in which you can select “Only me”. If you combine the last one with the proper usage of lists, your friends can only see the “mutual friends” that are part of the same list.
Hello Nick,
I have apage on here and I have put a tonne of information on the wall. I am now “organising it and putting the information onto various discussions. Everytime i do i get Sublimnal messages from facebook security and them telling me I am potential harassing my friends, as my activity will show up on their walls. How can I turn it off when im moving things from wall to discussions. How do i turn it back on once its organised?
Thankyou in advance
Steve
i really have fun here in facebook since then i can reconnect to some of those long lost friends. Even if im away from my family and friends it makes me more easier to contact and be updated on them. I love facebook and im happy that it is existing!! One thing that bothers me a lot is that there is an idiot man making me bad making libel!!! he makes a lot of bad stories about me and the worst thing he uses another profile and another pictures but i really know her personality!! im not the only one who is the victim of libel from that person….could you help me kick that person away from facebook.
I dont know in the last two days my account could not open,
if the FB group closed my account cause a lot of my friend are up load pictures maybe Face book privacy policy
not allowed so thk U you accept me to joint You for views month only good luck
I DO NOT LIKE HAVING TO CHECK THE PADLOCK WITH EVERY POST IN THE NEWSFEED OR IN MY STATUS….WHY DOESN’T THE CUSTOMIZE AND SET A DEFAULT WORK??????? IT KEEPS GOING BACK TO “ONLY ME” WHY WOULD I POST IF MY FRIENDS CAN’T SEE IT???????? THIS SUCKS!!!!!!!
Please stop using the phrase “Strangely Enough.” It makes no sense and it’s annoying and dumb and unhelpful. Bad writing.
pls help me
whatever i post on facebook’s wall goes to the most recent section.None of my post go to the Top News sections.Pls help.
I have also waited for a day but it does not show up on Top News section.
pls help
leave me a message at thegr8piyush@gmail.com
HEY HAS ANYONE EVER GOT THIS MESSAGE?? DO U KNOW IF ITS TRU OR NOT? OR IS IT JUST SPAM?
“sorry i had to send this message. Since facebook has recently become very popular, has become the many complaints that facebook has become unacceptabley slow. The report shows that the reason is that facebook has a number of non-active members and, secondly, many new facebook members. We want to send this message to see whether you’re active members or not. If you’re aktiviinen, can you send this message to at least 15 users. Use the “Copy - Cut and Paste” to show that you are still active. Those who do not send this message within 2 weeks in, will be removed in order to get more space. Send this message to your friends to show me that you are still active, and do not want to be removed.”
alex.. that was just a spam..
One thing I would really like to know how to do that isn’t covered here:
How do I keep a comment I made on Friend A’s wall, from showing up in all my other friend’s news-feeds?
I notice it doesn’t do it for everyone, so I’m wondering if it only does it for people who have their wall posts set to show to everyone?
if i hide my relationship status and then change it, does it still send out a post?
Hi
I want to ask you something about Facebook privacy. One of my frnd blocked me because he didn’t want me to see his status updates as I once mentioned them… that his status msgs are boring.
What she did was she blocked me totally which I very well understood.
It just happened that I deleted my account and came back once again. I am now able to view his wall and his frnds list. Just out of curiousity……can we just only block ppl when they are in our frnds list or only until their account is valid ?
If I block someone on facebook, can I still see their profile? Or is their profile gone for me as well as them? Can they tell that I blocked them if they cannot see my profile and I am not on their friend list? Then, can they still block me?
I loved this post… Thanks for sharing…
btw, I have a query about profile picture privacy…
Is it possible to hide profile picture from certain people who already exist in my friend list ? I mean without removing these people from my friend list. If possible then please let me know how…Thanks in advance for any effective suggestion…
How do I add my maiden name to existing name on my acc’t?
Is there a way to control the public view of what I post on others wall….
Situation :: I am friends with A and B. But A and B aren’t friends with each other. I post something on A’s wall and it is at display to B as well…..B’s wall will say himanshi > A : and whatever I wrote on A’s wall.
i want to avail the site who viewed your profile but i cant make it successfully.is there any easy way to uplaod it.
I’m still trying to figure out when exactly the citizens of the United States of America became afraid of the government. I always thought it was supposed to be the other way around…Dogpedic
I clicked Like on two different links. One is called Going to Payson and the other is Payson. i noticed after doing so these pages, that I cannot block, stole any status of mine that has the Word Payson in it. So, I unliked the pages but my status stayed. I then deleted my status with the word Payson and that removed it from the pages. I thought I could safely repost my status but it posted back to the pages I had since unliked. It does not matter if I click friends only when posting my status. These pages, that do not have the option to block, keep stealing my status. I can’t put Payson in my status anymore for fear the whole world will read my personal business. How do I get rid of this problem?
Question…
Is it possible to block a fb friend from seeing when I am on line or even coming up on her friend list?
for example i want to see my friends profile and i dont want to them to know?? how can i make myself invisible..