Technology Tip: Five-minute Facebook security checkup

Technology Tip:

Five-minute Facebook security checkup

Facebook has been taking a beating in the press for its disappointing financial performance and declining stock price. But reports of the social network's death are a bit premature.

After all, a billion users is nothing to sneeze at. Even if only half that number sign into their Facebook accounts every day, as the company claims, that's a lot of eyeballs to present ads to.

I bet not even one out of 10 Facebook users has ever changed the service's default security settings, which make your profile information available for anyone to search and allow every other Facebook user to contact you.

Get to know the inline audience selector

To open Facebook's privacy options, click Home in the top-right corner of any Facebook page and choose Privacy Settings. Three big buttons are labeled Public, Friends, and Custom.

The Friends option is selected by default, but this is misleading because this setting applies only to posts and photos uploaded from Facebook apps that don't have the inline audience selector, such as Facebook for BlackBerry. The audience selector appears below the status window and photos you're about to post; it retains whichever setting you used previously (probably Friends).

The audience selector is shown as a lock on the iPhone Facebook app and as a gear in the service's iPad app. Perhaps savvy Facebook users know about and use this setting, but just as with the service's privacy options, I'll wager a small percentage of Facebook denizens are aware of these options, and fewer still use them.

A look at Facebook's default privacy settings
Of course Facebook wants you to be easy to contact. The more friends you have, the more money Facebook makes. The fact that some of these "friends" are total strangers seems not to matter to many users.

My social networks -- personal and professional -- are limited to people I have met face-to-face, with two or three exceptions in the pro network for people I know by reputation only. You don't need to go to this extreme to restrict who can contact you on Facebook, however.

To prevent total strangers from reaching out to you on Facebook, click Edit Settings to the right of How You Connect. The default is to let everyone look you up by profile name, e-mail address, and telephone number; and to allow all users to send you friend requests and Facebook messages.

Since I'm conservative about who I wish to deal with on Facebook, I've changed these settings in my personal account to those shown in the above screen. I'm more open about being contacted via my professional social networks.

See your profile as others see it
Whether you share your Facebook information with everyone or only friends, it's a good idea to know exactly what you're sharing. The only way to know is to view your public profile. To do so, go to your profile page by clicking your name at the top of the screen, and then click View As.

To change what's on view in your profile, return to the Privacy Settings and click Edit Settings to the right of Profile and Tagging. You can share posts with everyone or just friends. More options are available for who can see what others post to your profile and posts you're tagged in.

Even if you share only with Friends, Facebook defaults to allowing the friends of the people you tag in a post or photo to view it as well. To prevent the friends of the people you tag from seeing the posts or photos, choose Custom in the drop-down menu next to "Who can see what others post..." and "Who can see posts you've been tagged in...."

In the Custom Privacy window, uncheck "Friends of those tagged" and click Save Changes.

The Profile and Tagging options also let you review posts friends tag you in before they appear and to review tags friends add to your posts. This setting came in handy when my wife's niece got tag-crazy and started tagging my wife in nearly everything she posted in a misguided attempt to ensure that my wife saw her posts.

The tag-review process can quickly become tedious, however. My friends are generally judicious in their tagging, so I don't find reviews necessary. (Note that you can also block a friend's posts by clicking the down arrow in the top-right corner of the person's post and choosing one of the "unsubscribe" options.)

Review your Facebook app settings

The last three categories on the Privacy Settings page let you manage ads, apps, and sites; block access to your past posts; and block specific people and apps. The first blocking option converts all posts you've shared with the public and friends of friends to friends only (with the exception noted above for friends of the people you've tagged).

To block a person, click Manage Blocking and enter their name or e-mail address. You can also block app and event invitations from specific people or add them to your restricted list, which shows them only the posts you designate as public. The last setting allows you to prevent an app from contacting you or getting non-public information from you.

Then again, you may simply want to dispose of an app you no longer use. To delete apps, click Edit Settings next to Ads, Apps, and Websites, choose Edit Settings again next to your list of apps, and click the X to the right of the app's listing.

Select Edit to the right of the app to restrict the information the app can access, the audience for the posts the app adds to your wall, and whether the app is able to send you notifications.

I'm tempted to send instructions for limiting these app posts to all my friends who play FarmVille, Words With Friends, and every other Facebook game. You bought a cow, you spelled "cow," I'm delighted for you.

Yes, I know I can block all such posts by clicking the down arrow and choosing "hide all from FarmVille," but in a perfect social network, such posts would be opt-in, not opt-out. Who knows? I might may end up owning a virtual cow myself one of these days. I just hope I don't feel compelled to tell the world about it when I do.

 

Have a great day!!