How to stop Facebook from sharing your location

Have you noticed that when you update your status on Facebook, your location is included? This may happen even when you didn’t request or enable that feature.

You can hide this information by clicking in the Update Status box. You will see the closest city listed at the bottom of the bar.

Move your mouse over the city and click ‘’x’’ to remove it. If you want to restore it, move your mouse over the area where the location used to be and click ‘’Add current city’’.

For the Dutch viewers, you can download a pdf file here about the privacy settings of Facebook. 

If you care about your online privacy, you should read this

People are paying for digital services with their personal information. This is only becoming worse. I am talking about smartphones, social media and online games. You pay with your privacy, whether you want to or not, because you have ‘’no choice’’. You just follow the crowd. Many people have an iPhone, use Twitter, play Wordfued or Draw Something. They also agree to a huge list of conditions (which almost nobody  reads), and give away all the personal information to a few American organizations who can do whatever they want to with your information. You tell them everything; who you are, what you like, who you know, what kind of music you listen to, and the movies you watch. But also; who you are mailing, what you write in a mail, your location and where you are going to. You tell them everything.

In the meantime you are being filmed by security cameras and other iPhones. You are in a video on YouTube, being tagged on Facebook, or someone is mentioning you in a blog or Tweet. All this information will be saved, exchanged and even sold behind your back.

The online privacy is getting more and more public. I am writing this blog post to make you aware of this situation, because one thing seems certain: privacy as we know it today, will no longer exist in the future.

More tips to secure your privacy are coming soon. The next post will be about the privacy on Facebook.

It’s possible to see what others are doing on their smartphone with public WIFI

You can unlock somebody’s phone without having their passwords or locking code. When someone succeed to get access to someone’s phone they can see the call history, voicemail and even make calls.

Secondly, there is a software program that allows people to get in your Facebook/email/Twitter etc, when you are using a public WIFI signal. They can read your (private) messages and even send messages or change some settings. Doug Stewart is giving some tips to avoid this in the video. 

Facebook Timeline privacy tips

You might have read that from 30 March on, all Facebook accounts will have the Timeline lay-out. Timeline makes is easy to find things like events or wall posts, but it will also be easier for friends/strangers to search your profile by date. Here are some privacy tips to lock down your profile.

Make your Timeline private

You can make your Facebook profile or Timeline private by following the steps bellow:

1.       Go to ‘’Privacy Settings’’

2.       Edit settings for ‘’How you connect’’

3.       Change settings for ‘’Who can post on you Timeline?’’

4.       Change settings for ‘’Who can see posts by others on your Timeline’’ from ‘’Public’’ to ‘’Friends’’

1.       Go to ‘’Privacy settings’’

2.       Go to Edit settings for ‘’ How tags work’’

3.       Change settings for ‘’Maximum Timeline visibility’’ from ‘’Public’’ to ‘’Friends’’

(You can also choose to change the settings to ‘’Only me’’, then you will be the only one who sees the posts)

1.       Go to ‘’Privacy settings’’

2.       Manage past post visibility by clicking ‘’Limit the audience for past posts’’

Now all past post to Friends-only, even if you initially made them public will be changed.

Hide past posts

It might take a while to hide all unwanted posts, it depends on the number of posts you want to hide.

1.       Click on the first year of your Timeline and you will see all highlights from that year (or months)

2.       Click on the upper right corner of each ‘’highlight’’ post and choose ‘’Hide from Timeline’’ or ‘’Delete post’’

3.       After you hide or delete the ‘’highlight’’ posts, you’ll need to click on each month and hide or delete all of those posts. Continue doing this, until you have hidden or deleted all the unwanted posts

4.       Ocassionally items, like friend acceptences, will be grouped together and it is possible to hide them all at once

Delete your posts from other people’s Timelines

You are also visible on the walls of your friends, but have no control over it. It is possible to remove your posts from someone else’s Timeline.

1.       Go to Timeline

2.       Click ‘’Activity Log’’ and you will see all of your posts (comments, likes, events etc. organized by date)

3.       To see just your posts, Click ‘’All’’ in the upper right corner and choose ‘’Your posts’’

4.       Delete the posts which you don’t want them to show up anymore

‘’Friendio’’ the new Facebook?

Since Facebook introduced Timeline, there were some privacy changes for the users. These changes caused complaints that Facebook was asking users to share too much information. For example, when someone changes to the new Timeline layout, old posts and tagged pictures that were set ‘’private’’ and ‘’friends only’’ will be visible to the public. There are also positive reactions on Timeline, but many Facebook users lost their trust in this social network site. 

If you are concerned about the privacy settings, you can read the top 5 privacy tips for the Timeline  here.

As a reaction to the Timeline of Facebook, Friendio came in the picture. Friendio is just like Facebook, but they promise more privacy and control. The new social network site has the same functions as Facebook. They have similar tabs and capabilities for friend requests, messages and notifications. For more information about Friendio click here.


So, will Friendio be the new Facebook, or are people so addicted and loyal to Facebook that they will not leave this page? 

How to protect your online privacy settings

‘’I made a Facebook account because my friends have one’’

‘’I’m drowning in the amount of Tweets of the ones I am following’’

Does this sound familiar to you?

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube. There is no escape anymore from these websites in your daily life. Each one of these has its advantages, but more importantly, also disadvantages. The most of us are already active on Social Media. It is fun to share and stay connected to your growing network. In the meantime we are giving away so much information without realizing it. For example, people do not only know where you live, your age, your relationship status, but also where you are at the moment or which events you will be attending.

Of course there are privacy settings you can change to hide(personal) information. But how can you stop someone from posting a photo of you or how can you prevent to be mentioned in a comment?

In the following blogs that I will be posting every week, I will give updated information about changes in the online privacy settings. So if you’re interested, please follow!

Let’s end this blog with a video about Google saying: ‘We are only doing it for you’.