Why privacy on the internet is laughable

People keep talking about you can protect yourself online if you delete certain profile pages on these free online public data searches. Well, that’s just laughable to me. The only way to protect yourself is to

What happens to your page when you delete it from a social network?

I have heard a lot of people tell me that they are frustrated with Facebook changing the layout or Twitter because their tweets are being indexed in google. So they tell me they want to delete their page. At first blush, this sounds fair and good. But then when you think about it…what happens to

Get that crap off of your facebook wall!

Want to keep folks from posting things on your wall? You might have noticed with Facebook’s latest changes that a lot of the things that used to be on your home page are now auto posting to your wall. Well there is hope to keep you from having your feed cluttered with “Bling”…of course if you like bling, you might not want to change anything.

First thing to fix!

If you click on “Profile” and then directly underneath the share button, you’ll notice a little button that says

Want to stop people from knowing when you add a friend on Facebook?

It’s easy to stop someone from being nosey every time you add a friend on facebook.  Simply go to your settings, choose “Privacy”, click on News Feed & Wall, and uncheck Add a Friend.

PRIVACY on FACEBOOK…the right way

So, I have had a lot of my friends ask me why do I post so many things about my job? Or how can I feel so confident about some of my status updates about people who are clearly in my friends list. Aren’t I worried that I will offend them? I thought I would go ahead and tell once and for all the correct manner to lock down your Facebook page so that you can have a page that you feel comfortable posting whatever you want.  First things first.  Have you really locked your FB page down at all?  You need to make sure your page is set to “Only Friends”.  To do this, simply go to the top right corner of your page and hover over where it says “Settings” with your mouse. Now you’ll get a drop down and click on “Privacy Settings”.

Okay, now you are at a screen like this one:

The point I want to get at here is that there are several different choices for you to look at.  See how you’ve got the Profile Privacy, Search, News Feed, And Applications?  Then you still have the Block list down below.  There is a lot you have to set up to fully protect yourself on Facebook from predators…and um…from those nice co-workers that you don’t want seeing your status updates:) LOL! So…lets get started shall we?  First thing..Lets click on Profile. From the Profile you want to make sure you change every one of these drop down menu’s to be set to “Only Friends”.  You’ll notice you can click on the drop down arrow and change it to Friends of Friends, My Networks, All Networks, well if you have it set to Friends of Friends as an example, then lets say I am your friend. And lets say I am friends with your boss. But you are not. And lets say I comment on your photo, well now your photo that I just commented on can be seen by your boss and because it was set to “Friends of Friends” that’s possible! BUT if you had that one setting changed to “Only Friends” Mr. Boss man, would have never seen the photo.

Okay, now, the next thing to do is to set your “EXCEPTIONS”.  Here’s the fun part.  Ever have some folks you don’t want to see your status?  Like Boss man?  Here’s where you change that.  Scroll down to where it says “Status and Links” and where it says “Edit custom settings” click there.  Now you can type in the friends that you don’t want to see this information.  You can do this on each section you see here.  You can even set up groups if you have people you are typing all the time. For instance all my co-workers and people that I am just barely aquainted with, I have named “Work & Peeps I dunno”.  It is nice because I really don’t want them to know that I am a staunch democrat that is bent over drunk in Vegas every weekend…um..Okay so back to the privacy.  There is another tab you need to do this same thing with called “Contact Information”.  You almost could miss it if you blinked – but look up towards the top of the page – see where it says “Privacy” in blue? Okay now look down…It says Basic on a blue tab right? Look directly to the right…Ahhh that’s what I meant.  Contact Information.  Now you can do even more protecting of your data with things like cell phone, address, etc. This is perfect for those random people you accepted when you first joined facebook and just wanted some friends but felt bad about deleting them now…Now’s the time to stop showing all your personal information. If you want to block your photo’s there’s an “Album Privacy” tab on the Photo’s tagged of you section that has a customizable tool as well to stop individuals from seeing your page.

To view how someone see’s your page go to the top of this particular view(See below) and type in their name in the field “See how a friend see’s your profile”. That will test out how your work has taken effect. Just always remember to hit save first!

Next I want you to go back to Settings with your mouse, hover over and go to privacy again. This time, we’ll choose the News Feed & Wall. You’ve got two things to be concerned with here.  You see the two tabs at the top? Actions within facebook, and Facebook Ads?  You want to make sure to turn off the facebook ads so that you do NOT show up in any facebook ads and you want to make sure on the actions within facebook that you pick the settings that are appropriate for your taste. I personally do not like for anyone to know when I accept a new friend so I have that turned off. I don’t want people seeking my friends for friendship so I usually turn that off and I also hide my friends from a good majority of my friends. But again, that is a personal preference, based on my own wants of not desiring to be innundated with friend requests.

One of the last tips (I have more, but am stopping for now it’s late:)) is to block any unwanted people ie; co-workers, old school mates, ex boyfriends/girlfriends, etc. you can do this from that main profile privacy page. Just type in the persons name into the search box at the bottom of the page. You can type in as many names as you want. Once you see their face, click “Block” and then they can’t see you or anything related to you including if you comment on someone’s post or photo – it’s as if you and they dissapear from FB forever. It’s quite beautiful actually. Much better than myspace.

=Hope this all helps you!