A Quick Tutorial on How to Update Your Facebook Privacy
Editor’s Note: The following is transcribed from the video above.
Hey, everyone, I’m Terry Cutler. At the end of 2015, I gave a talk to my new friends over at The Sacred Heart School in Montreal on the topic of Facebook stalking and cyberbullying. I showed them in detail how to lock down their profiles so that it wouldn’t be open for the world to see, and I’d like to share it with you too. Well…., let’s get to it……….welcome to the #AskTerryCutler show!
Hey, everyone, it’s Terry Cutler and I want to show you how you can perform a Facebook privacy checkup to make sure your profile isn’t revealing too much personal data.
Ok, so the first thing you want to do is to go to your Facebook profile by click on your name here at the top. For this demonstration, I’ll be using my own profile so that you can follow along.
You’ll then want to move your mouse to the top right over the lock icon and click it. Let’s start with the privacy checkup. The first thing you want to make sure is that your posts are set to friends and not public. If it’s set to public, that means that anyone browsing on your profile whether or not he’s a connected friend will see what you’re posting. Not a good idea, so make sure it says friends and click next.
Next, we get to tighten up what our installed applications are doing. You might have a much bigger list than me but let’s look a few examples so that you can finish off your list. Some of my apps are set to friends, public and only me. These are the applications you’ve used to log into Facebook with. In my case, I have no use for the Costco photo importer app, so I will just go ahead and delete it. Vimeo which is a competitor to Youtube is set to the public. For me, this is ok because I share videos like this and I want the world to watch, share and learn from it.
First touch soccer I can delete, Cision PRE I have no use for, delete, Cueler youtube we can delete because it was discontinued. The rest I use.
Now once you’ve gone through and cleaned up your list, let’s click next.
The profile information section is very important so let’s make sure this is locked down. Facebook allows you to get granular with your permissions. You have choices like public, friends, friends of friends, only me, and custom.
It also allows you to share this info with specific networks. If we click on custom, you can be specific with whom you share this with. If we click in the share with box, it assumes you mean friends, but you can also start typing people’s names and only they would see this information. You can also type people’s names in the “Don’t share with the section” if you think they’re shouldn’t see it.
• Your phone number should be set to “only me” unless you really want to share it. I have my phone number here because I use the Facebook advanced security setting called 2 step verification which I’ll show you at the end of this video.
• As for emails, I share one of them so that people can reach me if they have questions. Otherwise set them to “only me”.
• For birthdays, I have it set to friends. This way on your special day, you get to feel the love from all your connections. Of course, you can always hide this by changing it to “only me”.
• As for hometown, I keep this to friends.
Once you’re done, click finish up. Yay, you’re done !!! no, not really. We got a few more things to look at.
Let’s click the lock another time and select “who can see my stuff”. The question is, “who can see my future posts?”. Make sure this says friends and not public and I’ll show you why.
Next, we’ll click on “User activity log”. Ever wondered what you liked last summer? Facebook can tell you. Anywhere you see a picture of a globe, it’s a problem. This means the person’s profile you’re interacting with is set to public. 1st thing you need to do is SHARE THIS VIDEO WITH THEM.
You can, of course, delete the activity by clicking on the pencil and choose delete. Look for things like photos you’ve been tagged in that has a globe next to it and I’ll tell you why in a minute. You might also notice an icon with 3 people in it. This is called friends of friends.
This means that my friend’s friend who’s not even connected with me can see my posts. I’ve seen this being problematic whenever I teach this at schools.. is that kids are being stalked because their friend’s profiles are endangering them. That’s why It’s important to help assess your friend’s profiles as well. Again if you see their profile isn’t locked down, SHARE THIS VIDEO WITH THEM.
Now to answer the question from a minute ago, The reason you don’t want your photo tagged by a friend with a globe which means public next to it is that people can find and look at your pictures using a technic called Facebook graphing.
If you go up to the top-left search field and type in something like “photos of Terry Cutler”, my pics that I’ve set public will show up. Those of you with all your permission set to public can get most of their profile pulled out from this technic.
We’re not done yet so let’s click the lock again, click “who can see my stuff” and click on “View as”. I love this feature because it allows you to browse your own profile as an outsider. What’s even cooler is that you can also go to the top here and browse your profile as a specific person that you’re connected with.
As you can see, or can’t see for that matter, my wall of posts. Unless you’re connected with me it won’t show.
If you see posts on your profile that you don’t want, exit out of preview mode by clicking on the little X in the top left and let me show you how to fix that.
I’ll take this example of the Star Wars 8 production announcement post. If you pull down the privacy setting for the post yours most likely says public. Go ahead and change that to friends. Remember we also changed “who can see my future posts?” to friends as well so that we won’t have this problem anymore.
Let’s continue, click the lock again, “who can see my stuff?”, view as and start browsing your profile.
Click on ABOUT and double-check to make sure the majority of information isn’t displayed unless you really want it to be. The more information left open here allows for someone to create a fake profile using your picture to connect with your friends.
They can later try to trick you by saying “I’m overseas and got mugged and have no money, can you send me $500?”. Please don’t fall for that.
Keep scrolling down, it’s a good idea to clean up your group likes to avoid anything coming back on you that you shouldn’t have liked. If you’re a pet owner living in Montreal, I encourage you to check out Spa 4 Paws or le spa 4 pattes as we say in French. High recommend them.
If you scroll back up, and notice under “family and relationships” that you have family members listed there, you simply again X out of preview mode and change it from public to friends. And start again. There’s a good chance you’re seeing family here because their profile is set to public. Please share this video with them.
Many people have their personal photos incorrectly set. I can more often than not click on someone’s profile who I’m not connected to and see their vacation photos or family parties.
It’s a good idea to keep these to friends only or delete them. You have to remember that whatever you post online is never deleted. There’s always a copy somewhere. So always think before you post.
If you see a photo that shouldn’t be public, simply click your photo and click the globe at the top right of the picture and change it to friends only.
Some of you don’t own a PC and do everything via their phone so don’t worry, I gotcha covered. The settings are similar from the app, you just have to tap on the more icon in the bottom left, and scroll down to “Privacy short cut”. From here you can do similar functions but I find you have more control from the PCs browser.
I want to show you one last thing that ties into passwords. I know so many people that create such crappy passwords that their code can be broken in seconds. With this trick, I’ll show you how to secure your crappy password.
Earlier I spoke about my phone number being in my Facebook profile. This is because if someone manages to crack my very strong password, they still won’t get into my Facebook profile because a special text message with a code will be sent to my phone asking to approve their device. Without the combination of both passwords, they can’t get into my profile.
To enable this feature, click the lock again and choose “See more settings”. Once here, click on the security tab on the left. Next click on login approvals, and select “require a security code to access my account from an unknown browser” to get started. It should be self-explanatory after that.
I hope this video was enough to get you started. If you’re watching this video from anywhere other than my blog site, head on over to TerryCutler.com. and of course, If you have a question you’d like an answer to, hit me up on twitter using the hashtag #AskTerryCutler or by email at [email protected] and please do me a favor and subscribe to Internet Safety University.com, it’s going to be a 4 part FREE video series that will be loaded with great information. You never know if your question will be featured in an upcoming video.
If you could please share this video with your friends I’d really appreciate it. There are so many people whose profiles are wide open. And, If you’re a victim, I’d love to hear your feedback on what you found and if these tips helped you out.
Stay safe my friends and I’ll see you all in the next video.
