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Facebook Places: How to Regain Control Over Your Privacy

Brian — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 17:03:19 +0000

Facebook recently launched Places, a location-based function that enables mobile Facebook users to check-in to locations you visit. This has a very similar model to the popular location-based social media site Foursquare.

This new feature enables any Facebook user to mark and share your or their location. You can see everyone who’s checked-in at current or nearby locations and can tag your friends who are with you.

How To Use Facebook Places

From your mobile device, click on the Places tab.
“Is Facebook allowed to know your location? Allow or Disallow

You can then share your current location, browse locations around you that your friends haved checked-in, see other Places etc. For example, when I tested the check-in I saw a series of five locations in the area I was going to check-in (i.e. 711 and McDonalds).

You can also add places, i.e. your house and tag people who are with you. Tagging those with you is very similar to the photo tagging features.

The Default Setting Facebook Opted You Into

When you use Places, your check-ins will appear on your profile, in the News screen and in the Activity Feed for the Place you checked-in. Your friends can check you in without your approval. When you check-in, your location is visible to your Friends and anyone else nearby.

My Personal Concerns

Being a military member, operational security is a major concern of mine. If military members share their locations, while tagging other military members, this gives the enemy specific locations and information along with an idea of how many soldiers may be checked in at a specific location. Once Places is launched in other countries, it’s even scarier. Soldiers have the potential to give up their deployed locations and painting a target.

I’m also concerned with friends checking in other friends to locations without permission. If someone of a high status, i.e military commander, judge, mayor, teacher, priest, etc is tagged at a location such as a strip club, bar, etc the consequences could be damaging to that person.

While Places isn’t a bad thing, not properly locking down you privacy settings, while being “Friends” with so many people you probably don’t truly know can be a problem waiting to happen. Use the steps below to adjust your privacy settings accordingly.

Control Who You Share Locations With & Who Sees Your Check-ins

Log in to Facebook
Click Account -> Privacy Settings
Find Customize Settings (bottom left hand corner) and Click

In the Things I Share header find Places I check in
Use the drop down menu to choose Friends of Friends, Friends Only, choose Specific People, or Only Me
From the same screen, you can also choose to hide your check-ins from specific people by typing their names in and selecting them.
Also within the Things I Share screen, you’ll find the Include me in “People Here Now” after I check in box. This option lets people view your location by the location page or when people search nearby locations. Uncheck to disable.

Remove Your Friends Ability to Tag You at Locations

By default, your friends can check you in to locations without your permission. Whether you are at a location or not, the location your friend tags you in can get you in trouble or make your life more difficult. They can check you into a location as a joke (i.e. strip club, adult video store, etc) or share an actual location you visit without your knowledge.

Log in to Facebook
Click Account -> Privacy Settings
Find Customize Settings (bottom left hand corner)
In the Things Others Share menu, find Friends can check me in to Places.
Set to Disabled, so your friends can’t check you in

Disable Applications Sharing Your Location Data

Login to Facebook
Click Account -> Privacy Settings
Find the Applications and Websites link (bottom left-hand corner) -> Edit Settings
Click Info accessible through your friends -> Edit Settings
All checked boxes shows you which Facebook Applications are available for your friends to use.
Scroll down to Places I’ve visited and uncheck if you don’t want your friends applications getting your location information

What are your thoughts on Facebook Places? Do you share some of the same privacy concerns I have? How about for businesses? Do you see the value this new feature provides?

Hide Annoying Facebook Status Updates & Applications

Brian — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 00:51:03 +0000

Have you ever clicked to accept a friend request on Facebook without realizing what you were getting yourself into? Perhaps your old buddy from school sounded like a great addition at the time until you realized you’d get to see every move they made throughout the day in their 30 status updates. And then there are all those annoying application status updates, such as Mafia Wars and Farmville. While most simply deal with seeing all these annoyances on their timeline, using the hidden Hide button can really enhance your Facebook experience.

Here’s a quick tip to Hide the application updates and specific friends from showing up in your time line altogether. You can call it streamlining your Facebook or simply get rid of those annoying Facebook updates, without offending your buddies.

It’s actually very simple…

View your Facebook Timeline and look for an annoying application or Facebook User you’d like to hide.
Move your mouse in the top right-hand portion of the update to reveal the “Hide” button.
Click on “Hide.”
Choose to Hide Application or to Hide the User.

That’s all there is to it. Here’s a quick video that shows you exactly how this easy task is done. It’s like pushing the mute button.

Smiley’s Now Available in Chit Chat for Facebook

Brian — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 23:22:17 +0000

Today’s post is a short guest post by Daniel Offer, owner of the Facebook download Chit Chat for Facebook.

He recently wrote Facebook articles onFacebook Status Tips and Facebook on the Blackberry.

Thanks to the new Facebook Chat feature you can now use Facebook Smileys on Facebook.

Whilst I like using Facebook Chat, I hate remembering the Facebook Codes. Chit Chat does that for me now.

Chit Chat for Facebook is a Facebook Instant Messenger that allows you to use Facebook Chat from your computer, like you would Windows Live Messenger or Yahoo Messenger.

To insert an emoticon on Chit Chat for Facebook, you just click the emoticon button and select the emoticon that you wish to send to your Facebook Friend.

Windows 7: Do You Know Your WEI?

Brian — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 19:16:50 +0000

Today’s post is a guest post by Daniel Offer, owner of the Facebook download Chit Chat for Facebook.

He recently wrote Facebook articles on Facebook Status Tips and Facebook on the Blackberry.

In Windows 7, Microsoft has made it possible to compare the performance of your computer against a common standard. It’s called the Windows Experience Index, or WEI. This article will explain why it might be useful to know your computer’s WEI and show you where to find it.

Have you ever looked at the list of hardware requirements on a box of software and been completely baffled as to whether your computer met all of the requirements on the list? Even techies can struggle to remember all of those numbers if they have more than one computer to deal with. Well, here comes the WEI to the rescue.

The whole idea of the Windows Experience Index is to give you one number to remember for each computer. The WEI is generated by evaluating the performance of a computer’s CPU, memory, graphics processor, and primary hard disk. Windows 7 will then take the score of the lowest performing component and assign that as the computer’s WEI.

Software companies are now expected to determine the lowest WEI score their software will work with and put it on their packaging along with the hardware requirements. Then, you just have to compare their WEI with yours.

Here’s how you can find your computer’s WEI:

Click Start.
Right-click Computer.
Select Properties. Your System window should open and display a white number on a blue background in the middle. That is the computer’s WEI:

The phrase in blue, “Windows Experience Index,” is actually a link. If you click it, you can view the individual scores of the key system components from which the WEI was derived:

If you’ve made any key hardware changes since the date of the last update shown at the bottom (or don’t yet have a WEI), you should re-run the assessment (click the link in the bottom right with as few programs running as you can manage).

You can see in the image above that the WEI was determined by the lowest score, that of the primary hard disk. This will normally be the case unless one of the other components is much older.

If you have a component that scores lower than the primary hard disk, or is significantly lower than you think it should be, you might consider upgrading that component and re-running the assessment.

Knowing your computer’s WEI can help you in two ways: it can help you determine if you can run a new software package, and it can help you identify key system components that you might want to upgrade. So what’s your WEI?