Story:
Warning!!! Facebook Has Changed Their Privacy settings Once More!!! Due To The New “Graph App” Anyone On Facebook (Including Other Countries) Can See Your Pictures, Likes, And Comments.
The next 2 weeks I will be posting this, and please once you have done it please post Done! Those of you who do not keep my information from going out to the public, I will have to Delete You! I want to stay Privately connected with you. I post shots of my family that I don’t want strangers to have access to!!! This happens when our friends click “like” or “comment”… automatically, their friends would see our posts too. Unfortunately, we cannot change this setting by ourselves because Facebook has configured it that way. Please place your mouse over my name above (Do Not Click), a window will appear, now move the mouse on “Friends” (also without clicking), then down to “Settings”, click here and a list will appear. Remove the Check on “Life Events.” By doing this, my activity among my friends and family will no longer become public. Now, copy and paste this on your wall. Once I see this posted on your page, I will do the same. Thank You.
Other Versions
1. Hi everyone! As you all know, I like to keep my FB private except to those I am friends with. So if you all would do the following, I’d appreciate it. With the new FB Timeline on its way this week for Everyone. . . please do both of us a favor:
Hover over my name above. In a few seconds you’ll see a box that says “Subscribed”. Hover over that, then go to “Comments and Likes” and un-click it. That will stop all of our posts showing up on the side bar for strangers to see. But most important, it limits hackers from invading our profiles. If you re-post this I will do the same for you. You’ll know I’ve acknowledged you, because if you tell me that you’ve done it, I’ll “like” it. Thank you.
2. With the new ‘FB timeline’ on its way this week for Everyone…please do both of us a favor: Hover over my name above. In a few seconds you’ll see a box that says “Subscribed.” Hover over that, then go to “Comments and Likes” and “Games” and un-click it. That will stop my posts and yours to me from showing up on the side bar(ticker) for everyone to see, but Most Importantly it Limits Hackers from invading our profiles. If you re-post this I will do the same for you. You’ll know I’ve acknowledged you because if you tell me that you’ve done it I’ll ‘like’ it. Thanks.
Analysis:
These messages, in several forms have been circulating since Facebook introduced the timeline feature. They claim that Facebook activity of the user can be broadcast to strangers around the world, and so the privacy settings need to be changed. There is ‘some fact’ about the messages.
The messages talk about the concerns that a Facebook user’s activity will spread through the ticker/news feed of friends of friends, and can even go public through the Facebook Graph Search feature. This way, the messages claim that the Facebook user’s privacy is at risk. This actually depends on the Facebook privacy settings of you and your friend.
Actual Problem
When you have the privacy setting for your posts set to “Friends of friends” or “Public”, and one of your friend does not have the sufficient privacy settings, Facebook will notify and spread your activity to the friends of your friend and/or public – this happens when your friend likes or comments on your Facebook activity. This is the concern here. This way your Facebook activity can spread to strangers and risk your privacy. Facebook explains the same in their Privacy Policy:
When you comment on or “like” someone else’s story, or write on their timeline, that person gets to select the audience. For example, if a friend posts a Public story and you comment on it, your comment will be Public. Often, you can see the audience someone selected for their story before you post a comment; however, the person who posted the story may later change their audience.
Since you have your privacy set to “Friends of friends” or “Public”, your Facebook activity will spread to the same.
The Proposed Solution
As a solution to this problem, the messages ask the Facebook users to hover over their friends names in Facebook timeline and then uncheck the “comments and likes“, or “life events” from the settings. This is not a fact.
When you change these settings, all that happens is, you will not see those Facebook activities (comments, likes or life events) of ‘your friend’ in your timeline. It does *not* stop your activity being broadcast by your friends. This is NOT a solution to the problem, so do not share the messages.
Actual Solution
If you want to keep your Facebook activity limited to your friends, and stop strangers and the friends of your friends from seeing it, you should stop using the “Friends of friends” and “Public” settings, and instead use “Friends” or “Custom” Lists. If you want to stop seeing any Facebook activity of strangers (or friends of friends) through your friend, you should inform your friend or those strangers about it, and explain the need to change their privacy settings to either “Friends” or Custom lists. If they do not understand this, you can simply post a message on your wall saying:
“If you do not want your Facebook activity to be seen by everyone via the ticker, News feed or Facebook Graph search, please set your privacy to “Friends” or create “Custom lists. Share this message.”
You can set these features by going to your Facebook Privacy Settings and then choosing “Who can see my stuff?” and “Who can look me up?“. You can check the privacy of your posts from the ‘Privacy level indicator icon’ on the right that will tell you who it was shared with – Public, Friends, Friends of Friends, or Custom (See the picture below). And in case you need to protect all your previous posts, you can use the “Limit Past Posts” feature in the privacy settings. (unless you already have “friends only” or specific lists to avoid friends of friends or anyone else from seeing your activity)
Note: Facebook is a social networking website, so some of your features are always publicly available, like your name, profile pictures and cover photos, and also when you write on a Page’s wall or comment on a news article that uses Facebook comments plugin. In these cases, you will not see the Privacy level indicator icon, so as a general rule, you should assume that if you do not see a Privacy level indicator icon, the information will be publicly available.
Hoax or Fact:
Partly fact.
References:
Facebook data use policy – sharing and finding you on Facebook
How to use Facebook security
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