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sappatoti -> RE: Anybody familiar with Facebook? (4/4/2010 8:28:14 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: TheHeretic
Does anyone know if Facebook has a feature that allows you to see who has been viewing your profile, or to hide your profile from someone in particular?
There are a few third-party apps (not built by Facebook) that claim to have the ability to keep a list of those that have viewed your profile, the number of times they have, etc. I tend to shy away from third-party apps as many of their privacy statements use vague, questionable language so I don't yet trust them. While they may track who views a profile, they must also be granted permission to have access to everyone else's profile info as well. I do not wish to put those who view my profile into a situation where their privacy may be compromised because I'm using a third-party app.
As for hiding your profile from particular people, Facebook does have a sort of a "blacklist" process you can use for many things, but not everything. There is a certain amount of information in your profile that remains public, such as your profile name, your profile photo, etc. The list of always-public info can be found within the Privacy settings of your account. The simplest way to keep that always-public info limited in scope is to simply not put anything incriminating in those parts of your profile (or leave them blank if it is allowed).
For everything else that can be posted to your wall or shared with others, you will find a small dark padlock icon. Rollover that icon and the current level of privacy will show up. If it's too broad for that piece of information, click on the padlock and security options will show up. One of them might be "Only Me" which posts that info only on your Wall and it won't show up on anyone else's News feed. Another option should be "Custom" and clicking on that will allow you to add people to a list of those that should NOT see that piece of information.
I've used it and it does work, although it can get pretty tiring rather quickly to keep having to blacklist certain people from seeing everything that I post or share at the item level. The blacklist option is available as a default for some things in your account's Privacy settings but I have found I cannot count on that one setting alone to keep everything I post or share from reaching those for whom I don't want viewing it. Some third-party apps may not even look at your account's default privacy settings and instead rely on you duplicating them within the app's own separate privacy settings.
Facebook is a royal pain in the ass when it comes to privacy or blocking others from viewing your profile and posts. I'm convinced that it was designed to NOT be private at all, and what little bit of privacy that is available now was put in to appease the masses screaming about lack of privacy options. But those options have to be manually set in so many different places that it becomes burdensome or tiresome to keep track of them all. Plus, like PA alluded to, changes in FB's APIs or frameworks can, and sometimes do, negate your privacy settings or makes them ineffectual at best. One must then go back and review every privacy option they've previously set to make sure that it hasn't changed back to FB's default or been altogether removed.
Just as a note, yesterday FB closed their public input on another round of proposed changes to privacy, so depending upon what they decide, we all may have to go through this privacy lock down song and dance yet again at some point in the near future.
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