We reported yesterday that Facebook users around the world will have one more privacy setting to worry about with the addition of automatic facial recognition technology for user photographs. FastCompany’s Kit Eaton followed close on the heels of this story by posting an easy-to-follow guide for opting out of this feature and managing other privacy settings. Here’s the gist of it:
1. Facial Recognition. Under the “Account” drop-down menu at the top-right of Facebook’s title bar, click “Privacy settings.” On the bottom half of the next window, under “Sharing on Facebook” click “Custom.” Then at the bottom, click on the little blue pencil and its “customize settings label.” In the next window scroll down to the “Things others share” section and the third list item, “Suggest photos of me to friends.” Click on the “Edit Settings” button, and scan to the middle right of the new pop-up window, which has little pics of your friends to remind you how friendly Facebook is. See the facility is enabled? Click on this button, select “Disabled.” And then click on “OK” to make the pop-up go away.
2. Things you share. While you’re on the privacy page, check this list, which starts with “Posts by me” and ends with “Places you check in to” and verify that the status is “Friends only,” which is as tight as you can set these. Disable the “Include me in ‘People here now’ after I check in” button to make sure you don’t appear associated with a Facebook Place. Then click through to “Edit privacy settings for existing photos and videos” to double check you’re not sharing pics and videos with everyone.
3. Things others share. Same trick here for the shorter list that starts with “Photos and videos you’re tagged in,” ends with “Friends can check me in to places” and includes the new Face Recognition trick. All of these can be restricted to Friends only, and you may want to pay attention to the “Friends can check me in…” button if you’re protective of your location data. If you like, you can lock your wall so friends can’t write on it.
4. Contact information. This may be one that you’d most like to protect. Double check the settings for your address, IM screen name, and email addresses say “Friends only,” and note that by selecting “custom” from each button’s drop-down menu you can set it to “Only me” for highest privacy.
5. Connecting on Facebook. Click “Back to privacy settings” to see how your information is searchable on Facebook. Check “search for you on Facebook” and restrict it to “friends only” if you want to control how many friend requests you get. And double check other items like “see you current city…” and “see your likes…” are correctly set.
6. Apps and websites. Click “back to privacy” where you manage which parts of your data the apps you use can access and share automatically, what info about you your friend’s friends can see, and how much of your Facebook profile is shown up when people Google your name. Check all of these and pay special attention to “public search,” which is where you give search engines permission to crawl your data.
7. Block lists. From the main Privacy settings page, here’s where you can target specific Facebook users and limit their access to you.
Read more at FastCompany.
