There's A Button For That!

​A few months back I brought up all the ways that Facebook has started to change their algorithm, now to add to their everlasting expansion they have completely begun enhancing their privacy settings. As 2018 continues into the crazy summer months the possibilities to keep your personal lives private are endless. In new news you can get an update of your privacy settings with a new feature called Privacy check-up. I have found this feature to be extremely important lately especially with just recently graduating this past Sunday. I can't have my whole college life online for the world to see forever! Or can I? A few centimeters away from the “Home” button, you can click the blue question mark icon which drops down to a variety of new buttons, one of them being the Privacy check-up button. Basically you’re able to see three of the most important things on your profile, quickly enough without searching through your “About me” info or any other confusing sections.

• It allows you to look at a few different features that show you how your profile is doing over all, and how much or how little it is actually hiding.
• It will show you who is viewing your post, what Applications that are known as third parties that can see all of your information-and which ones cannot.
• And you can control what parts about you that people are viewing. Can your friends see your age? Can your grandmother see your new job posting? Yes? Can your ex see where you work? No? Perfect!!

These settings have about five different choices that you can pick. Choosing to have the “Public” to view it, “Your friends”, “Your friends except…” that one crazy coworker that stalks your every move, “Specific Friends” only your besties from college and no one else, or “Only Me”. Once you decipher who is viewing what and where, you can check to see how your overall profile is appearing to the public spectrum and even choose if you want people to be able to send friend requests to your or nt. You could set it just so that you can send and message people, and if you don’t accept their friend request then there is legitimately no way for them to contact you. This is helpful for those of us that have our full name or a variation of our full name on our profile, and do not want to be contacted by certain viewers. This makes your profile more filtered and safer, that way you’re in total control over who has the ability to stay in touch with you. Right underneath the heading that says Privacy Checkup you see Privacy Shortcuts. The shortcut section is where you can decide who can contact or friend request you, and how you can stop someone from really bothering you. If someone is really irking your nerves you can block not only their name, but their email address too. This way you’re able to prevent them from contacting you no matter what they have their Facebook linked to.
You can make yourself invisible, in other words limit who can even look you up, when you make your Facebook page you have to enter in just about anything they ask for… this includes your email, your phone number, your first and last name, your birthday, and if anyone that knows you enters in any of those things then there you are. You’re found. They might not be able to add or message you depending on how you have everything set up, but they can still physically see you, and if we really don’t want that then here’s how to fix it. Something that could really make or break a difference and that sounds so serious is actually super simple to do. Again, if you go to the little question mark button and click Privacy Shortcuts à See More Settings à in the “How People Find and Contact You” heading; there’s a little spot that says “Who can look you up using your email, phone number, etc. GENIUS!!
Oh but I’m not done yet, you can even have your profile kept off search engines, like Yahoo, Bing and Google. Personally I didn’t even know this could happen, but believe me. If you’re online, even when you’re off you’re still on. You can fix this though! Have you ever heard the Apple commercial, with the slogan “There’s an App for that!” well, with Facebooks new privacy settings, There’s a button for that! If you follow the same steps that you did to ensure how individuals contact you, you can go to the same place to turn off access for search engines. Just switch the “Yes” to a “NO” ☺.

Connecting online is so important in this day and age, so hopefully now that you have a few extra tricks up your sleeve you'll feel a little better about it knowing how private you can really keep your life while still being public!

Don't forget to follow us on Facebook @chikmedia and let us know what you think about all these new privacy hacks!

As always,
xoxo♥
Alayna Anderson
Editorial Contributor
Intern and Mini Badass in Training
 
 

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