Facebook has long been hailed for it’s tight privacy settings. It’s the reason most of us ever tried using it, hell .. that’s the main reason I never used Myspace. No privacy at all (or so my belief is/was) on there and all those weird ugly websites people put up.
Well, it seems Facebook has joined the ranks of MySpace. Their latest “privacy” policy is anything but privacy. By default anything and everything you have up Facebook is now available for public scrutiny. Even Facebook CEO’s private pictures were leaked (or was that on purpose?).
Though no worries. Thankfully the wonderous people at Gawker media have written up a quick-ish guide on how to reclaim most of your privacy. It takes a while (not too long though), but it is all well worth the time.
Here’s the link to The Valleywag Guide To Restoring Your Privacy On Facebook
Another good read by Gawker is about what and why it the policy changed: Facebooks Great Betrayal
Here is the quick and short version of how to get most of your privacy back:
First, go to http://www.facebook.com. This will open up the main page and it is our starting point. Then on the upper right hand corner in the blue area, click on “Settings“. On this page, right above “deactivate account” at the bottom of the page is a Privacy thingy, click “Manage” to the right of it. Then click on “Personal Information“.
Now in here, click on the lists on the right side, and set everything to “Only Friends”. This will ensure that ONLY those people whom you have added as friends can see any of your information. Of course, customize it as you see fit. You don’t have to be 100% paranoid about it.
If you’re trying to market yourself a bit, it might be a good idea to open up your profile just a bit. My suggestion would be to ease the settings on the About Me page and on the Comments On Posts setting.
From here, click the “Back To Privacy” button near the top left and on this page click “Applications and Websites“. To make a long story short, you’re trying to get to this page: Edit Applications (http://www.facebook.com/editapps.php).
On here select “Authorized” in the Show menu. Now see that HUGE list? Yeah .. that is every application that has FULL access to your personal data. Now do you really want that cheap quick you just took to forever have full access to all your data? No way!
So here, click on the “X” by any and all application which you DO NOT USE or do not want them to have access to your data. Note though, that you CAN customize which data the application have access to (sort of). Just click on “settings” next to the application name.
Once you are done deleting away all the useless application, which might take a while, the next step is to change what your friends can share about you. Don’t be surprised if your friends accidentally share something embarrassing about you. Time to change that.
Go back to the Privacy -> Applications and Websites setting page. Now click on “What your friends can share about you“, click the Edit Settings button.
Simply uncheck anything you don’t want them sharing. Simple.
Last but not lease, to remove your friends list from the public eye go to your profile page (by clicking on the “Profile” link at the top left). Scroll down until you see your Friends box on the left. Click on the edit button.
Once clicked a little box shows up, in there UNCHECK “Show Friend List to everyone”.
You should now be more or less safe. There are a few more settings to play around with, but I tried to summarize the main ones here. Good luck and keep those crazy party photos to yourselves plz. K, thanks!
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