What did you think of our instructions for how to make your Facebook private? Were they clear and easy to follow? Do you think we missed some crucial privacy settings? Let us know in the comments below. Thank you for reading.
facebook getting rid of privacy settings
Origins: Back in December 2012 Facebook announced it would be retiring an option that allowed users to control whether they show up when others type their names into the Facebook search bar. The social network began eliminating that option (which shows up in privacy settings as "Who can look up your timeline by name?") from the accounts of people who weren't using it, and in October 2013 Facebook announced it would be completing the removal of that setting for the "small percentage of people still using it":
This development did not, as claimed in some alarmist messages spread on the Internet, "delete all privacy settings on Facebook," nor did Facebook "get rid of its privacy policy" (and the change certainly had nothing to do with the Obama administration or the U.S. government). All of Facebook's other privacy controls and policies remain in place, and while the "Who can look up your Timeline by name?" setting had some utility for helping Facebook users be less visible to those who might be searching for them, it didn't absolutely prevent others from finding them:
There is no equivalent function for preventing other people from finding a Facebook user by name in the search bar, as Facebook has been moving towards prompting users to maintain privacy on an item-by-item basis rather than by entirely hiding their profiles and activity from others. However, as noted in a Washington Post Technologyarticle, using a variety of privacy settings and precautions can help prevent the revealing of your personal information to those whom you might not wish to see it:
[W]henever and however you post, you should be checking to see if what you're putting up is for public view or just for friends or specific lists of friends. Also, consider turning on Timeline approval, which shows you what your friends may be posting about your location or whom you're with. You can ask them to remove your name from those posts. Facebook has settings that let you review posts and photo tags before they're posted to your Timeline. If privacy is a major concern, use these tools and don't hesitate to ask other users to remove posts about you that make you uncomfortable.
Another key option in the privacy settings menu is one that lets users disable search engines from linking to their timelines. That will at least cut down on the chance that someone looking for you outside the social network will be able to find your profile.
As well as who can see your future posts, you can also change the privacy settings of your past posts. This is useful if you want to make your account more private but don't want to delete all of your old posts.
You may never achieve perfect privacy on Facebook. But by taking a few simple steps, you can make your account more private and secure. Review the eight settings above and see which ones you can change to better protect your information.
Facebook has a rather extensive selection of privacy settings, many of which are scattered throughout your account settings. Here are some chief privacy concerns Facebook users should address to keep their profiles private.
When you use InPrivate browsing or guest mode, Microsoft Edge collects some info about how you use the browser depending on your Windows diagnostic data setting or Microsoft Edge privacy settings, but automatic suggestions are turned off and info about websites you visit is not collected. Microsoft Edge will delete your browsing history, cookies, and site data, as well as passwords, addresses, and form data when you close all InPrivate windows. You can start a new InPrivate session by selecting Settings and more on a computer or Tabs on a mobile device.
Want to know how to further control your privacy online? Here's how to find and delete your Google data now and the browser privacy settings you should change immediately. Plus, what digital security experts wish you'd do to protect your phone app privacy.
The focus of this notice rolling out in the next few weeks to all Facebook users is on targeted ads and facial recognition, so you can review the latest info and adjust your settings easily from the prompt. You can access this information at anytime as well by following the details below where we outline navigating Facebook's privacy settings.
Social media privacy policies enable you to customize your account settings and allow you to control who sees your posts. When you sign on to any social media network, your first stop should be at the site's privacy policy page and to check out any settings for any privacy, security, or administrative options you can select (or deselect).
Does this include in application telemetry? The entire first part is privacy from friends, not from facebook. But remind people they can opt out of the class action arbitration clause too for the next few weeks.
The Facebook social networking site offers many online games that users can play alone or with friends and other Facebook members. By default, most Facebook games post activity updates to your Profile page and News Feed. If you don't want your friends and other Facebook contacts to see your Facebook gaming activities, adjust the privacy settings for games on your Facebook account's Privacy Preferences page.
Five months after it first announced coming privacy changes this past summer, Facebook is finally rolling out a new set of revamped privacy settings for its 350 million users. The social networking site has rightly been criticized for its confusing privacy settings, most notably in a must-read report by the Canadian Privacy Commissioner issued in July and most recently by a Norwegian consumer protection agency. We're glad to see Facebook is attempting to respond to those privacy criticisms with these changes, which are going live this evening. Unfortunately, several of the claimed privacy "improvements" have created new and serious privacy problems for users of the popular social network service.
The new changes have definitely simplified Facebook's privacy settings, reducing the overall number of settings while making them clearer and easier for users to find and understand. The simplification of Facebook's privacy settings includes the elimination of regional networks, which sometimes would lead people to unwittingly share their Facebook profile with an entire city, or, as Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg explained in a recent open letter, an entire country.
Most important, however, is the simple fact that as part of this transition, Facebook is forcing all of its users to actually pay attention to the specifics of their privacy settings. Considering that many if not most users have previously simply adopted the defaults offered by Facebook rather than customizing their privacy settings, this is an especially good thing.
No question, these are positive developments that hopefully will lead more people to carefully review and customize their level of privacy on Facebook. Unfortunately, the new flexibility offered by per-post privacy settings, a definite "good," is being used to justify the "bad"...
We understand you may not want everyone in the world to have the information you share on Facebook; that is why we give you control of your information. ... You choose what information you put in your profile, including contact and personal information, pictures, interests and groups you join. And you control the users with whom you share that information through the privacy settings on the Privacy page.
Meanwhile, the privacy policy as updated in November did specifically call out certain information as "publicly available" and without privacy settings nearly half-way down the page, surrounded by privacy promises such as these:
No longer. Major privacy settings are now set to share with everyone by default, in some cases without any user choice, and we at EFF do not think that those new defaults fall within the average Facebook user's "reasonable expectations". If you're a Facebook user and you agree, we urge you to visit the Facebook Site Governance page and leave a comment telling Facebook that you want real control over all of your data. In the meantime, those users who care about control over their privacy will have to decide for themselves whether participation in the new Facebook is worth such an extreme privacy trade-off.
One of the most common ways of complying with privacy laws and getting your Privacy Policy URL out to the public is by placing it in your website's footer. People know to look here since it's such a common business practice, and it's typically available from any and all of your site's pages for easy access.
Beyond general privacy settings, teen Facebook users have the option to place further limits on who can see the information and updates they post. However, few choose to customize in that way: Among teens who have a Facebook account, only 18% say that they limit what certain friends can see on their profile. The vast majority (81%) say that all of their friends see the same thing on their profile.5 This approach also extends to parents; only 5% of teen Facebook users say they limit what their parents can see.
While the basic settings provide a great deal of control over who sees what, Facebook offers many additional options for fine-tuning your privacy level. Here are some of the other settings you can adjust to match your preferences.
There is one exception to these privacy settings. If you are a member of a public group, anyone on or off Facebook can see what you post, comment, and share within the group. There is no way to make that information private short of deleting the post.
Facebook can be a great way to keep in touch with people and see what your friends are up to. However, some of its settings put your privacy at risk, and there are things you can easily do to improve them. 2ff7e9595c
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