Facebook’s privacy settings finally make sense — for a reason. BY | Jan 18, 2013 Give Facebook some credit. A few years ago, its growth seemed unsustainable. Everyone assumed that some other social network would eventually rise up to replace it as had happened to its precursors Friendster and Myspace. And its privacy controls felt purposely confusing. Now, with more than a billion active users, the site is still growing. Why is Facebook finally offering privacy settings that make sense? Because they’re about to start using your information in new ways that may make you squirm. You may have already taken Facebook’s tour of the new settings. Find this near the upper right hand corner, click on it and select “See more settings” at the bottom of the menu that pops up. You’ll see this screen: 1. Facebook is going to be making more and more of your information easily accessible. 2. 3.
Most people want to allow friends to post on your wall but if protecting your images is your priority, you may want to make it available only for you. The Privacy Guide to Facebook's New Graph Search. Like all things Facebook, the social network's new Graph Search will certainly generate privacy worries — the main function of the "third pillar" of Facebook is pretty much creeping, after all. Indeed, while CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in announcing the social-search tool Tuesday that the new product was built as "privacy aware," the social network is also touting Graph Search's ability to find things you like and meet new people, based entirely on data you've been sharing before this thing existed. Zuckerberg even suggested Facebook could turn into a kind of dating service as people met friends with similar interests — not exactly comforting if a too-clever Graph Searcher stumbles upon your old spring-break photo because you forget to check the right boxes all over again.
From a new set of opt-out options to just how much of your preferences are now searchable — and sellable — here's everything you need to know about protecting yourself from the many advances of Graph Search. Do this now, before Facebook’s Graph Search embarrasses you. Well, crap. Facebook launched search and now you have to figure out what is going to show up in searches around the globe.
We feel your pain, so we’ve outlined just how privacy works in this crazy, Facebook world. When the social network announced its Search Graph yesterday, there was one word chief executive Mark Zuckerberg kept repeating: privacy. Rightfully so, as the social network holds information that sometimes you don’t even know is available about you. “No one can see anything that they wouldn’t have otherwise been able to see,” said Facebook public policy manager Nicky Jackson Colaco in an interview with VentureBeat.
Don’t get surprised. Facebook is like a safe containing a ton of your personal information — which you’ve purposefully and willfully cracked with an axe. Individually, that all sounds fine. This is where people may start being surprised with search. The only way to protect yourself from this is to go through your profile and find out what groups you’re in. Why? So… If you “can’t” leave Facebook… I’ve been posting a lot about Facebook recently. I gave ‘10 reasons to leave Facebook‘ a few weeks ago – but for many people that seems either to be impossible, or very, very difficult.
So, what can you do if you ‘can’t’ leave Facebook, and you want to minimise your privacy risks? After the new stuff on Facebook’s Graph Search (see my blog posts here and here), now the revelation that people on Facebook will no longer have the option to avoid being ‘searchable’, this is becoming more and more important. So what can you do? Well, here are twelve suggestions from me – I’m sure there are many more… Check your privacy settings. How to Protect Your Privacy from Facebook's Graph Search. Facebook has launched a new feature—Graph Search—that has raised some privacy concerns with us.
Graph Search allows users to make structured searches to filter through friends, friends of friends, and strangers. This feature relies on your profile information being made widely or publicly available, yet there are some Likes, photos, or other pieces of information that you might not want out there. Since Facebook removed the ability to remove yourself from search results altogether, we've put together a quick how-to guide to help you take control over what is featured on your Facebook profile and on Graph Search results. (Facebook also has a new video explaining how to control what shows up in Graph Search.) Update: Based on a recent revelation that, despite locking down their own privacy settings, people were showing up in unwanted search results via friendships and relationships, we've added a few more privacy tweaks that help your friends avoid unwanted search results.
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