Every so often, Facebook revamps their privacy settings to make them more user-friendly. Among the most recent new features are better control of your news feed, the ability to view your profile as another user, and a simplified privacy page. Need to navigate your privacy settings? With just a few tips, the new set-up will seem completely natural. Luckily, the new privacy settings are far more intuitive than before.
You could fill a library with all the possible settings to adjust, but there are a few major ones everyone should deal with. You can start with the grandma-boss-lover rule of posting: Assume they all see whatever you put online and act accordingly. But then follow these steps to lock down your Facebook account.
1. Stop Facebook Cookies From Following You
Even if you log out of Facebook, it will persistently track your Web browsing until you quit your browser or install a browser extension that will knock out its (and others’) ability to follow your trail.
There’s no reason the whole world needs to know you had tacos for lunch in September 2010.
Tired of manually untagging yourself from questionably appropriate photos?
When your friends go into “Farmville” or “Words With Friends” through Facebook, they currently take your data.
If you find it creepy that your friends visiting Yelp know where you’ve been eating, turn off the personalization.
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You could fill a library with all the possible settings to adjust, but there are a few major ones everyone should deal with. You can start with the grandma-boss-lover rule of posting: Assume they all see whatever you put online and act accordingly. But then follow these steps to lock down your Facebook account.
1. Stop Facebook Cookies From Following You
Even if you log out of Facebook, it will persistently track your Web browsing until you quit your browser or install a browser extension that will knock out its (and others’) ability to follow your trail.
- Download the free browser extension Ghostery for Firefox or Chrome.
- Follow the arrows of the setup wizard. You can select check boxes to send anonymous statistical data or enable auto-update.
- Specify which page elements Ghostery should block from communicating with third-party servers. Choices include advertising, analytics, beacons, privacy and widgets.
- Review the list of trackers that follow you automatically when you visit a website. You may be surprised by the number.
There’s no reason the whole world needs to know you had tacos for lunch in September 2010.
- Click Privacy Settings > Limit Past Posts next to “Limit the audience for posts you’ve shared with friends of friends or Public?” This will convert all your old posts to be viewable only by your friends (instead of the public).
- Click Limit Old Posts, then click Confirm. Note: This is a difficult setting to undo, as you’ll have to go post-by-post to change this setting later.
Tired of manually untagging yourself from questionably appropriate photos?
- Click Timeline And Tagging under the Privacy tab on the left.
- Set the dropdowns for “Who can add things to my timeline?,” “Who can see things on my timeline?” and “How can I manage tags people add and tagging suggestions?” to Friends.
- Toggle “Who sees tag suggestions when photos that look like you are uploaded?” to No One.
When your friends go into “Farmville” or “Words With Friends” through Facebook, they currently take your data.
- Click Privacy Settings.
- Click Apps from the left-hand menu.
- Select Edit next to Apps Others Use.
- Check boxes to determine what info you want shared when other people use apps. There are 17 options that vary from Birthday to If I’m Online.
If you find it creepy that your friends visiting Yelp know where you’ve been eating, turn off the personalization.
- Click Privacy Settings.
- Click Apps from the left-hand menu.
- Click Edit next to the Instant Personalization tab.
- Uncheck the box next to “Enable instant personalization on partner websites.”
- Click Confirm.