Facebook best practice: Applications and Websites

Ahh the wonderful world of Social Network applications! What surprises me most about them is the lack of moderation by Facebook. I cautiously say this because I really don’t know what it takes to pass an application into the network. I do know there have been many with a sole purpose to exploit. Now I don’t want to sound like some major conspirator, such as: some who think computer viruses come from the anti-virus companies, but, the truth is but a wave. You can see it coming. Every day there are webs of friends caught by some virus yet unknowing where it come from.

We are simple too trusting. Lets face it, we wouldn’t be on Facebook or other social networks if we didn’t trust some level of Facebook protecting us. And then there is a complete generation who never knew anything but this form of communication. To them this fad has always been. They have not seen more than a couple shifts on the Net.

Rogue Applications

For starters you want to Control what your friends can share about you when using applications and websites from What your friends can share about you.

Again, in theory, if you deselect all items… this will stop others’ applications from accessing your information. Because you would by default allow friends access to see your profile, so does their applications they choose to Allow. Sorry to be a party pooper, but I don’t care if your nice quiz/game/farm/war can not harvest my information as payment for you to play their free game. They in turn can customize ads to suit my liking. How clever!

All apps give you a chance to Allow the application, the odds are that most users don’t read the disclosure before hitting the Allow button. Besides this disclaimer is pretty generic and pretty much the same for every app. One would hope it had specific juicy details about what it wants based on what you plan to allow. Instead it gets the full coverage of allowing whatever privileges the user has with other friends.

But there is more. For every application there are finer permissions to be set. Go through the different filters to show what apps match the various selections. I go through all of them to be sure I set all apps the way I want.

Here you decide again what relation level you allow the chosen app to have by clicking Edit Settings.

Then be sure to look at the Additional Permissions tab. Here you can decide if you want to allow this app to post activity to the News Feed stream. I choose not to for everything but Notes.

Facebook best practice: Contact Information

Your information if you choose to publish for whatever reason is information anyone can use and that includes for purposes you would not wish for. This information should be protected even if you think everyone knows it already. There are folks out there that don’t know you from Adam (or Eve) and only care about selling your information to later be used in marketing or worse; black marketing.

We have Contact

Anything I do not have populated I just set to Only Me. But for most everything else I suggest Only Friends. The exception, again, is Add me as a friend and Send me a message; I allow Everyone to find me and even send me a message.

Facebook best practice: Profile Information

I had been working on a blog post on suggested Facebook security settings for about three months now. Today I decided to scrap it partly. Instead, I want to just pop out good suggestions whenever I come across them. Things change so fast in the social networking arena, I end up rewriting or loosing track of what I planned. So today is the start of hopefully many suggestions to staying safe while enjoying Facebook as a communication forum.

Right Privacy

I think privacy is probably the most overlooked setting users will assume Facebook has set right from default. Nothing against Facebook, however, you have to understand something about marketing if you want to succeed with allowing free usage of your products. It does not work well when there are roadblocks in the way.

Start with your Profile Information. Facebook would like you to share as much about you as they can in efforts to broaden your visibility to others; including those you would rather not by proxy of other friends. So first thing you want to look at is changing who can view parts of your profile. I suggest Only Friends

With the exception of Photos and Videos of Me, I have a custom setting here that in theory should protect you from a smug friend who may try tagging you in some photo that may be less than appropriate. Only you and in this case, my custom friend I have selected may see this and hopefully help warn you that you were tagged inappropriately. From this point if you have been tagged and you do not approve, you always can go to the said picture and simply remove your name.