New Facebook Privacy: Taking Control

Facebook has recently rolled out a new series of privacy controls. After some review, I've concluded that they're much leakier than before and the new defaults are worse than the original. Here's a summary of what's changed and how to restore the privacy that Facebook has stripped.

Broadly, I recommend all information to be restricted to Friends Only unless there is a compelling reason otherwise not to. Opening the information to My Networks is just asking for trouble. In the CSU Long Beach network there are 18,000 people alone. For instance, I want people to go to my website, so I have it visible, and my email address is also listed on my Zenfolio, so there's no reason why to have it restricted on Facebook.

More information is now easily accessible:

Before, your settings could be "Everyone" for notes, emails, and photo albums, but it took a lot of work to actually find the information. For instance, to find notes, I would grab the ID number after the notes.php?id= and this trick didn’t work for people who had picked out usernames. Now, the "Notes" tab shows up in the profile search. To fix this, go to Application Settings and set Notes privacy settings to Friends Only.

Email addresses are by default set to "Everyone." Before, the only practical purpose was if you already had someone’s email you wanted to find, like an old friend. The CSULB database attaches email addresses to names, which was useful for common name people; i.e. if there were two persons named Michael Yee in the CSU Long Beach network, but you knew my email was myee3csulb.edu (CSULB search), you could figure out which one was me (if my email was open, which it isn't; I also lost the password, so contact me at my Gmail). Now it's shown in the profile search, meaning that more people can see your email address. Go to Privacy Settings and set email access to Friends Only. Only your friends or close associates should know your email address, unless it's a business email.

The profile photo album is also now visible to everyone by default. You have to dig into the photo album settings to restrict it further. Since the profile picture is one of the most prominent features of one's profile, having Everyone access by default is a problem. People often have pictures of their significant others, poses that are more personal than professional, and other things. Non-friends should not be able to see your profile pictures by default. To fix this, go to Photos Privacy, scroll to bottom and set privacy of the Profile photo album to "Friends Only".

Photo albums also show up searches now as well. You should go through your photo albums and restrict certain ones (parties, indecent albums, etc.) to Friends Only.

Friend lists are weird now. Before, you could set it so certain lists or non-friends could not see the friend list. Now, it's either ON for everyone or OFF for everyone. You have to turn the friend list on by default, which you can do by clicking the pencil icon in the friend list in the profile.

Searching gives away more information

Your ability to block non-friends from seeing your friend list, the "Add as Friend" button, and profile picture are gone. This is really bad. I can confirm that at least 3-4 people who previously had their profile pictures hidden, hidden lists, and the Add as Friend button now have all three visible. You can still restrict people from poking you or messaging you. In addition, Facebook will show the groups you've joined and the pages you're a fan of. Facebook considers all of that information to be publicly available (according to their Privacy Settings FAQ) and there is no current way to hide them, except for removing your membership in all pages.

Facebook's defaults are terrible

Facebook revokes your searchable status – it reverts to everyone – and you have to switch it back to "Friends Only" so non-friends can't find you. However, as of this writing, restricting access to "Friends Only" doesn't work; my mom has that setting enabled but I can still see her under other accounts. Good job, Facebook. Way to make being invisible harder. Also, "Add as Friend" now shows up. I know one person who has accepted the new privacy settings that somehow has disabled the Add as Friend button (incidentally, the same person has also banned me), so there might be an option to disable that, but the 2-3 others who previously had it disabled now feature the "Add as Friend" button.

Facebook privacy has become considerably harder now. Check your settings, because the New Facebook is worse than the old one. Just like how the Old Facebook layout was a lot better than the new one.