Facebook Privacy settings - are you sharing too much?

Privacy Settings (updated June 2012)
You set all of your privacy settings here https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy

Control your default privacy - set this to Friends. Or Custom.  This is who can see your status updates, posts, photos, etc, whenever you post to facebook.


How you connect -

• Who can look you up using hte email address or phone number you provided. 
• Do you want anyone who gets hold of your email address to be able to identify you on facebook? If so, set Everyone.  If you're a teacher or someone in the public eye, you might not want this. So perhaps better to have 'friends of friends' - so the person would have to have not only your email address, but be a friend of your existing contacts on fb.
• Who can send you friend requests - same as above really - if you do'nt want to get friend requests from random people, don't set it to everyone. However, bear in mind that you *can* choose to ignore or block friend requests, so even if you do get random ones, you don't have to accept them as friends!
• Who can send you facebook messages? I'd set this to friends of friends....

Timeline and Tagging

• Who can see your timeline ? FRIENDS. Only. Nobody else.
• Who can see what others post on your timeline? FRIENDS. Only. Nobody else.
• Review posts friends tag you in before they appear on your timeline? ON - switch this on. If it's off, it means other people can tag you in a post and that will appear on your wall. You might not want that!
• Who can see posts you've been tagged in on your timeline? FRIENDS. Only. No-one else.
• Review tags frinds add to your own posts on facebook? ON - switch it on, same as above
• Who sees tag suggstions when photos that look like you are uploaded. Set to No-One. You really don't want this. Honestly.

Apps, Games and Websites

• Basicaly, here, go through every setting and link, and set everything to No, Disabled, No Thanks, and No-one.

All of these settings relate to "Can we share your information from your account with other third party advertisers, websites, applications, and other people". I honestly don't know why anybody would agree to letting a company like facebook share their personal information with any third parties.
 You DO have to go through all of the links on this page to eventually get to the settings, to disable them (everything is enabled or ticked by default) - but it's well worth making hte effort to do so.

Facebook - email addresses and face recognition

Email addresses - Facebook has changed yours to be <something>@facebook.com
Facebook recently made some changes to change your primary email address to be <yourname>@facebook.com, and relegated your normal email address down the list.  It also made this new facebook.com email address visible on your profile to everyone. The problem with this is that if any of your friends with smartphones synchronise their smartphone addressbooks with facebook, this will mean that they now have the new @facebook.com email address for you, instead of your real email address. Not great.
 
Here's how to get rid of the @facebook.com email address from your profile.

• Click on the "About" tab on your profile
• Go to the section marked "Contact info" and click"Edit"

• Click the padlock to change the settings on each email address to specify if it is displayed on your profile or not, and who can see it.
• Press "Save".

Stop Facebook from suggesting your name as appearing in others' photos

• Go to your Facebook account's privacy settings. https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy
• Go to "Timeline and tagging" and click on "Edit settings".
• Choose "Who sees tag suggestions when photos that look like you are uploaded?".
• Select "No one" if you don't want Facebook to tell your friends when it has recognised your face in a photo they have uploaded
• Press "OK".

How to set up a Facebook Fan Page for your business or organisation

If you represent an organisation or you have your own business, you may want a facebook fan page through which to communicate with your followers and customers.  This is very easy to do, and allows you to reach many more potential customers via social media networking.

So, here's how to create a fan page:

1. Go to an existing fan page, such as this one : https://www.facebook.com/KajoPhoto?ref=ts
2. In the left hand column, scroll down until you see a list of options, the first of which should be "Create A Page". Click that.
3. That will take you to here https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php
4. Choose the box that you think closest matches you. The "Local Business or Place" one is specifically for companies or organisations that have a specifically geographical base.  The other business/company and product/Brand ones are more suited to non-geographical businesses (e.g. if most of your sales are done over the internet).  If your product is the key thing of your business, go for a product one. If the business image is the key thing, go for the business one.
5. Select the appropriate category, and put your business name (what you want your page to be called) in the box immediately after the category - it will be labelled either 'brand or product' or 'company name' or 'business or place'.  Choose this carefully - this is the title for your facbook fan page - you would probably choose EITEHR your business name, or your website / marketing name.
6. Fill in any other required details, then tick that you agree to the terms and conditions (and read them first!).
7. Now you are taken to the Get Started page.  Your page now exists, but now you need to fill in some information on it.  
8. First of all, click LIKE (at the top, next to the title).
9. Now, add a photo (this will be displayed on the top left of your page. A tall vertical banner is a good format to use here).
10. Get Started Page : Here is where you set your page up - and you can keep coming back to this page whenever you like (it will always appear in the menu on the left, above "Wall" and "Info"). I would do them in this order:
1. Add a photo - This will be the vertical banner on the left of the page that everyone sees when they arrive at your page.
2. THEN - click on "Edit Page" on the top right of the screen and set all that up (see below). 
3. ONLY when you have got everything else set up and looking exactly as you want it, with some posts and updates on there, should you go back to the "Setup" page, and invite fans and add links to your website. People will tend to look at the page as soon as they get the link. If they do that and there's nothing there to see, they won't come back.
11. From the "Edit Page" option, you have lots more options down the left of the screen for setting up your page. This is where you set up all the information about your page, who can see it, who can update it or add photos, who can comment, etc. The most important tab is the "Basic Information" tab. Fill in as much of these as you can to tell your potential customers about your business and how to contact you.
12. Don't forget to click "Save Changes" after any changes you make
13. Click on "View Page" on the top right of the screen. This takes you back to the main view.
14. By default, you are taken to the "Get Started" view. To change to what your customers will see, use the menu on the left - they will see the same menu but WITHOUT the "Get Started" option. the Wall is where everyone will arrive at your page.

That's all for now - the basics. Here some quick HOWTOs for fan pages:

1. How to post on my fan page wall as my fanpage name or post with my personal name

• from your wall or Get Started, click on Edit Page (top right)
• Click on Your Settings (left hand menu)
• Tick the appropriate tickbox.   Save the changes.

2. How to let somebody else, or a different facebook account, administer my fan page

• ensure the person / persona you want to give admin rights to has a personal facebook account, and is a 'friend' of yours on facebook
• from your wall or Get Started, click on Edit Page (top right)
• Click on Manage Admins (left hand menu)
• Type the person's name into the box, and add them as an Admin.  Save the changes.

3. How to make a vertical banner for the main photo
Email kajophotography@gmail.com for a quote, and Kajo can create you one for a modest fee.

4. How to change the name or category of my business
Click "Edit Page" (top right), then Basic Information (left hand menu).

Any more questions? Email cerralin@gmail.com 

What not to share on facebook

So, we've been through the account and security settings on facebook, to help avoid scams, viruses and sharing information unknowingly.  But you also need to consider what you post on your wall (in your status) or in public events on facebook.  Here is a list of the things I would never post on facebook:

1. Home address, postcode, streetname, or even part of it - even if it's on your own wall or your own event, one of your 'contacts' could share it with their contacts and they could share again.  Do you really want 500 people you don't know turning up at your house for a party when you post that you're away on holiday a month down the line? It's an open advert to any criminal who noticed your address to keep an eye out for when you next post some holiday pics - telling them that your house is empty.
2. Your Date of Birth.  This is a crucial piece of ID that you use to identify yourself to banks and other instituions. If someone has this, along with your full name, and (with a bit of looking at your family links) your maiden name, you're making it very easy for someone to steal your identity.  By all means share your birthday (day and month), but DONT share the year or your age.
3. Inappropriate Photos.  Look at the photo. If you wouldn't be happy with it printed in a 3metre high banner out in the street for everyone to see, don't post it on facebook.  It is *very* easy to share other people's photos from facebook, so if you don't want everyone to see the photo, or there is even a small possibility that someone could use it inappropriately, DON'T risk it - don't post it.
4. Events - Don't make your private/personal events (i.e. for a specific group of friends) into PUBLIC facebook events. They can get shared and the invitations passed around to hundreds of poeple you don't know.  You can easily make events private and invite/share with JUST those friends you'd like to be there.  Do you *really* trust all 600 people, and all their contacts, not to spoil your event? Do you really want them ALL there?!  AND, dont include your phone number or your house address on the Event either.

That's all for now....just think of your security, and the security of the information that could get shared maliciously about you!

What's Facebook all about? How does it work?

So, you've signed up to facebook and you now have no idea what it is, what it does, and what you're supposed to do with it.  Sounds familiar? Yes, we've all been there.   Hopefully, this guide will give you a bit more info.

Facebook - controlling who sees your information

In this article we will look at how to set up your facebook account to ensure that others can only see the information that you want them to see.