privacy

Facebook Privacy Settings

Consumers’ perceptions of a company include their perception of a company’s executives and employees. Facebook and many other social networks, are built on open sharing and genuine conversations. Although personal profiles are not meant for business purposes, these profiles still influence how a person is perceived online. For those who do not want to mix business with their personal lives, Facebook, in particular, has a series of settings to help you control how open your personal profile is to the world.

Facebook’s privacy policy, user interface and controls have changed a lot in the past year. Here is a quick guide to help you set up your account the way you want it.

1. Go to www.facebook.com and log in.
2. Click on “Account” (located near the top right corner) and select “Privacy Settings” in the drop down menu. This is the first page of privacy settings you can change.
   
3. Under the “Sharing on Facebook” section, click the “Customize settings” link to customize your settings.
4. After customizing your settings, go back to the “Privacy” page.
5. Next, under the “Basic Directory Information” section on the “Privacy” page, click on the “View settings” link (located at the end of the paragraph). This page will allow you to customize what information you want to appear on your public directory profile. NOTE: Your name, profile picture, gender and networks are always open to everyone.
6. After customizing your settings, go back to the “Privacy” page.
7. Next, if you do not want your public profile to appear in search engine listings at all, under the “Applications and Website” section (located near the bottom right of the “Privacy” page), click on the “Edit your settings” link.
8. Click the “Edit Settings” button located right of the “Public search” item. Make sure the “Enable public search” item is un-checked.
   

There you have it. The settings are scattered about on Facebook, but using this guide allows you to control your privacy on Facebook. Well, some of it anyway.

Victor
eMarketing Strategist

Tags: facebook, privacy, settings, Social Media

Privacy Online: Possible?

This post was inspired by an article entitled Social Media Privacy is an Oxymoron. It sparked some thoughts for me around how one can achieve at least *some* privacy online; assuming this is important to you because for a surprising number of people, it isn’t.

First off – Facebook.  Many informative posts have been written about controlling your privacy or removing yourself from Facebook altogether.   Some high-profile Facebook users are taking a stand against recent changes on Facebook affecting privacy. And you may have heard by now that “Quit Facebook Day” is scheduled for May 31, 2010. Before you quit, you may want to first determine what amount of your private info on Facebook is exposed. This application, as well as this one can help you do that.

But while all the attention and heat is on Facebook, what about everything else? Among, what is undoubtedly, a myriad of vulnerabilities on the big old web, here are just a few ideas that may help you stay a little more private.

To prevent the tracking of my every click, I like to use CoolPreviews. This is a tool that allows me to see what’s behind a link without having to click on it. I like to use this a lot when logged into LinkedIn or Twitter, as the tracking of where and what you click can be scrutinized. For example, if you notice a tweet was posted via Hootsuite, and the link provided is an OWLY link, your click will be counted. Not a huge deal perhaps as your click, in this case anyway, is in no way connected to your account. (At least, not that I’m aware of.)  On LinkedIn however, if you are logged in and you check out someone’s profile, your “click” as it were, *is* linked to your profile. This enables this cool-but -creepy feature:

There is a long list of ways to add more privacy to your browsing habits. Many browsers like Safari and Firefox now offer ‘Private Browsing‘ ensuring you that no website you open will be kept on record. Anywhere. There are also many types of ‘scramblers’ you can use that mask your IP address. These are called proxy servers. This can help prevent data collection on where you are in this universe, what browser you’re using, what kind of computer you’re using, among other things. Want to know what your IP reveals about you? Go here.

Google Analytics and Quantcast, as two examples, are now offering “opt out” options. Google Analytics, for one, is allowing people to opt out of being monitored for receiving targeted ads.
Quantcast, an American based service that measures audience statistics for websites, is offering something similar.

This is just the tip of the iceberg for ways of preserving privacy online. The questions I have are:

Is it too little too late?

Is it time to redefine what online privacy means?

Should we care this much? Everyone is up in arms over the privacy principle, but is the privacy practice (the way our private info is being used) really that offensive and/or scary?

I’d love to hear what you think.

Tags: advertising, facebook, Google Analytics, LinkedIn, opt out, privacy, proxy servers, Quantcast, Twitter