Coping with Facebook's Dec. 2009 privacy changes

Eight suggestions for how to make the best of the NOT-improved privacy situation on Facebook (new 'public' settings)

If you use Facebook, you've probably become aware of recent changes to their handling of privacy settings. The new ability to control privacy of each individual post you make is a good thing. But the consensus from most users and observers (including the EFF) is that, rather than improving privacy, all of the other changes create risks to most people's privacy.

Below is a list of suggestions for how to exert as much control as you can and wish over your own FB profile. It's a draft - comments, suggestions, and corrections welcome!

How to make the best of the NOT-improved privacy situation on FB (new 'public' settings: "... your publicly available information, which includes Name, Profile Photo, Gender, Current City, Networks, Friend List, and Pages. This information is considered visible to Everyone.")

1. Personal Info: No other way to control this except by editing your profile. Do this by going into your profile (click your name in the blue top navigation bar, then click Info tab, then click edit). Manually remove your current city from your profile. Edit out, or uncheck the box to show, your gender. You may want to do the same with the checkbox for your birthday while you're at it.

2. Profile photo: Setting privacy on your Profile Photos album doesn't seem to keep your current profile photo from being viewed. If you don't want your face to be part of your public profile, replace it with one you don't mind being public. (or you can 'remove' it, but then FB will regularly nag you to put one back.) To change it, mouse over your profile photo when viewing your own profile, click edit (pencil icon), ...

3. Friend list: Hide your friend list from your profile: http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=927 View your own profile and look at the Friends box on left. "First, click the pencil icon in the Friends box on your profile. Then, uncheck the "Show my friends on my profile" box. People who come to your profile will not be able to see this information." Testing does show that if you have Mutual Friends, a friend will see a Mutual Friends box in the left sidebar of your profile, and if they click through to See all, they can then select the Everyone tab and see all of your friends.

4. Contact info: In your Privacy settings (pop up under Settings in blue top navigation bar) http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy, go to Profile Information at http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy&section=contact

- Contacts: check your email, phone, website, etc. (my Website was inexplicably changed to 'everyone' when the new settings went into effect).

- Edit 'who can add you as a friend' and 'who can send you a message'. If you currently allow all of your friends to send you messages, but don't want anyone who finds you in search to send you a message, set 'who can send' to 'only friends'

5. Photos: (your own): double check your album privacy settings, especially Wall Photos and Mobile Uploads which can be created automatically (and default to Everyone). see http://www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=photos. Note that this will not protect visibility of photos of you which your friends may allow to be viewed by more than just their friends - that's not a new risk, though - all you can do is control whether other people can tag you in their photos and videos.

6. Groups: To keep 'groups' from being displayed on your public profile: Hide your groups from your profile by going to Application Settings http://www.facebook.com/editapps.php, then under Groups, click Edit Settings - change privacy to 'only me' or 'only friends'.

7. Apps: Keep your friends' apps from getting most of your info: go into the magic place in the settings and uncheck everything you don't want to share with apps you don't use yourself - http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy&section=applications&field=friends_share .

- You can also check your permissions for the apps you DO use, at http://www.facebook.com/editapps.php?v=allowed - this link takes you to a list of all apps 'authorized', not just the default of 'recently used'.

- Finally, for apps you do not use, and really distrust, go ahead and block the application. To do this you go into the application's page and look for the 'Block Application' link, generally at upper left on the app page. Click and confirm.

8. Search: Restrict your Facebook search privacy (eg set Facebook Search Results to 'just friends' or 'friends of friends'), and disallow your FB profile from being indexed for public search: http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy&section=search (uncheck Allow Indexing)

Pages and Networks: There is currently no known/supported way to suppress the Pages you are a fan of, or the Networks you belong to, from appearing on your 'public' profile :( other than un-fanning the Page or leaving the Network.

Next to last: To make sure your public profile is as you want it: under Settings | Privacy Settings, go to Profile Information http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy&section=profile then click Preview My Profile (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?viewas=499458919).

Last: please leave your feedback here to FB: http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=privacy_settings_feedback