Guide to Controlling Your Information on Facebook

Transcription

1 Guide to Controlling Your Information on Facebook studentpirgs.org

2 Keeping Control of Your Information Online Most of us have a love/hate relationship with sites like Facebook. On the one hand, it's great to be able to keep in touch, see everyone's latest funny vacation photos and get up to the minute updates about what's happening in the world. Even Farmville and Mafia Wars were fun...well, for a while. On the other, it seems to be harder and harder to stay in control. It feels like every week there's a new profile page, a new set of ads that seem to know your every move and a new set of privacy settings. It's not just Facebook. More and more, we're losing control of our personal information online. Your internet company and smart phone are often tracking the sites you visit, building a detailed record of your interests, searches and even your location. Facebook and company are finding more and more clever ways to sell your data to the highest bidder and there's now a constant stream of stories about identity theft. And even when bad things like that don't happen, it s just unnerving to know that you're not in control of your information. It shouldn't be that way. As more and more of our lives are lived online, we think that: 1. A company should need your permission before collecting and using your information. You should also be asked for permission in a way ordinary consumers would understand. 2. When you do give permission for your information to be collected or used, it's the company s responsibility to make sure it stays secure. 3. In the cases where you have virtually no choice but to use a service, like your internet provider, you shouldn't be required to share your personal information. 4. You should have the same protections and choices when using the internet on a mobile device as a computer. We're working to make sure that those principles become the standard practice online. But in the meantime, we want to make sure you have tools to stay in control of your information now. What follows is our step-by-step guide for controlling your information on Facebook. For other websites and social networking sites, the Federal Trade Commission has put together a one-stop shop of advice for protecting your information and computer. You can visit it at

3 Guide to Navigating Facebook's Privacy Controls Facebook makes it pretty tough for you to control who gets to see your personal information. This guide will walk you through, step by step, how to adjust your settings to control who can see your information on Facebook. Contents: Intro: Getting Started Secure Browsing & Finding the Facebook Privacy Settings Page Learn how to turn on Secure Browsing and how to access all the privacy settings to control your information on Facebook. 1. Creating and managing friend lists Friend Lists are the easiest way to apply different privacy settings to different groups of your friends, family, and colleagues. They also allow you to control who sees your wall, post by post. 2. Controlling who can see your information wall, profile, pictures By default your status, posts, photos, and friends are public to everyone. This is where you control who can see this information by limiting access to friends, networks, or specific friends. 3. Controlling who can connect with you and see your basic information Control who can search for you, send you messages, see your basic profile information, and see your likes and interests. 4. Controlling what outside applications/websites can access If you do not want your information shared with outside companies, you need to disable Instant Personalization and adjust the settings for Info accessible to your friends and Applications you use.

4 Getting Started Secure Browsing & Your Facebook Privacy Settings Page Enabling Secure Browsing Facebook has begun rolling out secure browsing to help protect your account from hackers. You need to turn this protection on, it is not automatic. We strongly encourage you to turn on this optional protection as soon as you can. 1. Log in to Facebook and click the Account button on the top right of your screen. 2. Select Account Settings 3. Click Change next to Account Security 4. A menu will appear. Check the box next to Browse Facebook on a secure connection (https) whenever possible 5. Click Save

5 Your Facebook Privacy Settings Page 1. Log in to Facebook and click the Account button on the top right of your screen. 2. Select Privacy Settings This is your Privacy Settings Page: Key: A. Sharing on Facebook Where you control who can see your information: wall, profile, pictures. By default your status, posts, photos, and friends are public to everyone. B. Connecting on Facebook Where you control who can contact you and see your basic information. C. Applications and Websites Where you control what information applications and outside companies can see about you through Instant Personalization, your applications, and your friends applications. D. Block Lists Where you can block other Facebook users from interacting with you on Facebook or inviting you to applications and events. You can also see a full list of applications you use. E. Controlling How You Share This is Facebook s guide to privacy settings.

6 Chapter One: Creating and Managing Friend Lists With Friend Lists you can apply different privacy settings to different lists of people as well as control who sees what you post to your own profile page on a post by post basis. This gives you the power to share status updates, links, etc., with a customized group of people. You can put your friends on multiple lists. You can put them in a list based on categories like Family, College, or Work as well as by the privacy settings you want to apply to them like No Pictures or No Wall. In Chapter Two we ll walk through how to apply privacy settings to lists and control who sees wall posts. Creating Friend Lists 1. Log in to Facebook, click Account on the top of the right side of the screen, select Edit Friends. 2. Click Create a List on the top of the screen. 3. A box titled Create New List will pop up. You can give your list a title in the Enter a Name box and select friends to join the list. Here is the start of a list. 4. We ll go over how to customize your privacy settings for lists in Chapter 2.

7 Editing Friend Lists Once you ve created Friend Lists, you can go back and edit them to remove, add friends, or delete lists. 1. Log in to Facebook, click Account on the top of the right side of the screen, select Edit Friends. 2. To add or remove someone from a list, click Edit Lists to the right of their name. A drop down menu will appear where you can add or remove someone from a list. 3. You can also edit and see who is on a list by clicking on the list on the left navigation bar.

8 Chapter Two: Controlling Who Can See Your Information and Posts By default your status, posts, photos, and friends are public to everyone. This is where you control who can see your information by limiting access to friends, networks, or specific friends. You control who can see what you post, your profile, wall, contact information, places, photos and videos, and photos and videos you are tagged in. 1. Go to your Facebook Privacy Settings Page. You should see your current settings. Click Customize settings to change these settings. 2. You can edit who can see your information including your wall, profile, and the photos you are tagged in. For each, you can select Everyone, Friends and Networks, Friends of Friends, Friends Only, or Customize. Customizing allows you to only make the content visible to the friends and lists you choose or to block specific lists of friends. 3. Click Preview My Profile on the top right to see how specific friends will experience your profile.

9 Using Custom Settings 1. To hide information from specific friends or lists, or to share with only specific friends and lists, click Customize next to the setting you want to change. 2. A screen will pop up. Here you can hide this info from individual friends or lists by typing the person or list's name under Hide this from. 3. You can also choose to only share info with specific people or lists by changing the Make this visible section to Specific people and entering names or lists.

10 In Depth: Controlling Who Sees Photos 1. Go to your Facebook Privacy Settings Page. Click Customize settings to change these settings. There are two places you need to set controls for photos once for your albums and once for photos your friends tag you in. 2. Clicking Edit album privacy will redirect you to a screen of all your albums. For each album you can choose if it can be seen by Everyone, Friends and Networks, Friends of Friends, Friends, or Customize it to be seen by some of your friends and not others. 3. When you click "Edit Settings" next to Photos and videos I'm tagged in a pup up will appear. On the pup up there is a drop down menu for you to control who sees the photos your friends tag of you. Again they can be set to be seen by Everyone, Friends and Networks, Friends of Friends, Friends or Customize to be seen by some of your friends and not others.

11 In Depth: Controlling Your Wall, Post by Post In addition to controlling who can see your wall and who cannot in your Privacy Settings, you can also control who sees what you post on your wall on a post by post basis. This way you can share status updates, links, etc., with a customized group of people. 1. When posting from the Facebook feed or your profile, click the lock icon and a drop down menu will appear. 2. Here you can select Everyone, Friends and Networks, Friends of Friends, Friends Only, or Custom Your default privacy setting will show up, but you can override it for a single post.

12 Chapter Three: Controlling Who Can Connect With You and See Your Profile Information Control who can search for you, send you messages, see your basic profile information, and your likes and interests. 1. Go to your Facebook Privacy Settings Page and click View Settings next to Connecting on Facebook. 2. Your name, profile picture, gender, and networks are visible to everyone, but you can adjust certain setting to control who can search for you, contact you, and see other parts of your profile. For each, you can select Everyone, Friends and Networks, Friends of Friends, or Friends Only. For a few you can also select Customize. Customizing allows you to only make the content visible to the friends and lists you choose or to block specific lists of friends. See Chapter Two for instructions on customizing.

13 Chapter Four: Controlling What Applications/Websites Can Access The Applications, Games and Websites controls are where you can control what information your friends and applications share about you. It is also where you remove applications. 1. Go to your Facebook Privacy Page and click Edit your settings under Applications, Games and Websites. 2. There are three places you need to set these controls: 1. Instant Personalization 2. Info accessible through your friends 3. Applications you use

14 1. Instant Personalization You should disable Instant Personalization if you do not want your information shared with outside companies like Rotten Tomatoes and Yelp. 1. Click Edit Settings next to Instant Personalization. 2. On the next screen a video will pop up explaining Instant Personalization. You can watch the video, or hit Close to go to the next screen. 3. On the next screen uncheck the box to disable Instant Personalization.

15 4. A popup will appear confirming that you are disabling Instant Personalization. Click Confirm. 2. Info Accessible Through Your Friends Unless you edit these settings, outside applications can access your information through your friends. 1. On the controls page for "Applications and Websites" click Edit Settings next to Info accessible through your friends 2. A popup will appear. Uncheck all the boxes for information you want to block applications from pulling about you through your friends.

16 3. Applications You Use Applications you use can access your information. Applications can have access to various parts of your Facebook account. You can see what info they have access to, sometimes you can edit their access, and you can always delete them. 1. On the controls page for "Applications and Websites" click Edit Settings next to Applications you use to remove and edit applications or click Turn off to remove all applications. 2. A full list of the Applications that are accessing your information will appear. You can click Edit Settings to learn about them, or the X to delete them. 3. When you click Edit Settings the screen will expand to show what the application has access to. Most of the time you cannot edit what the application can access. You need to decide if you want the application to have access or not. For some, you can remove the ability for the application to access your information when you are not using it. Do so by clicking remove.

17 Together we can make change happen. It's a good thing, too. Our generation has some big challenges to tackle - from global warming to the rising cost of college, from homelessness to our collapsing health care system. It won't be easy, but by acting together we can find solutions. That's where we come in. Here at the Student PIRGs (Student Public Interest Research Groups), we organize college students to solve some of the world's most pressing public interest problems. The Student PIRGs are independent statewide student organizations that work on issues like environmental protection, consumer protection, and hunger and homelessness. For 40 years students with their campus PIRG chapters have been making a real difference in people's lives and winning concrete changes to build a better world. We give students the skills and opportunity to practice effective citizenship. Both here on campus and out in the world, we mobilize students to investigate big social problems, come up with practical solutions, convince the media and public to pay attention, and get decision-makers to act. For more information or to get involved, visit us at studentpirgs.org