Check your Facebook Settings

With the new school year about to begin, we thought it would be a good time to encourage you to review your Facebook Settings. You can access these by going to the little down arrow next to Home on the right hand side of the top banner on Facebook. 

The two things to click on are Account Settings and Privacy Settings.

In Account Settings, check on the following: When was your password last updated? I recommend changing it every 3 months). You'll also notice a download a copy of your Facebook Data. There are a few caveats to this: first, please don't ever delete your Facebook account. If you do, you are first deleting everything, photos status updates, everything that is on there and Facebook can't get it back for you. There is no amount of money that can get this information from the Facebook server. Additionally, you relinquishing control and will not be able to make any changes to any mistakes. For example, if you have a photo that a friend made public and tagged you in from a Bachelorette party, but you've deleted your account, you can't untag yourself from the photo. Second, if you ever plan to remove the Bachelor party pictures from your account, download your data first. This will save those photos so you can get them printed at Walgreens or your favorite print shop. Check and make sure the photos downloaded before you delete them though. 

The next section under General Account Settings to check is security:

This is where you will find the deactivate your account. Again, please don't click this. 

You will want to make sure your secure browsing is enabled. That means you'll see https://www.facebook.com in your address bar. The S stands for secure. For educators, MSTA recommends changing the Login Notifications to enabled. That way if someone logs into your account from an unauthorized source, you'll get an email with the details. This also means you will have to add trusted devices. MSTA does not recommend adding a trusted friend. You'll see that under my Active Sessions MSTA is logged into Columbia, MO and 5 other locations. Yikes. If you click edit, this is what you will see:

Having not been to New Jersey recently, we need to end that activity, which is as simple as clicking on end activity. We have seen people logged in in Bangladesh, India and Ukraine despite having never travelled there. You should be checking this activity regularly. At least once a month. 

Notifications:


If you prefer to get one email a day from Facebook make sure this is clicked. Otherwise you'll get a separate email from Facebook for every activity you designate. For educators, MSTA recommends keeping the box unchecked because you want to know what activity is posted about you as soon as it happens. That way you can make changes quickly. 

You will want to edit the following:
Facebook

 As you can see, MSTA likes to be notified whenever someone posts anything about us on Facebook, but we aren't as interested in "likes" and "pokes." Feel free to just copy our settings. 

The next most important one is Photos:

Again, MSTA likes to know when someone tags us in a photo, comments on one of our photos or comments on a photo we've been tagged in. Again, feel free to copy our settings and see if they work for you. 

Now, video is a bit different. For video, we want to know everything:

 Same with Wall Comments:

Apps are where a lot of people get into trouble. They authorize an app to play farmville or something and forget about it. There are two steps to cleaning up your apps. The first is to check and see which one you've authorized. Our list is fairly long. If you click on your apps and don't recognize something, delete it by click on the X. 

 If you click the X, you'll get this option:

Make sure to click the delete all app activity and then click remove. If you don't want to remove the app, you just want to remove some of the things the app is allowed to do, you can do that by clicking on edit. Things to look out for:

Post on your behalf, access your data at any time, Who can see the posts this app makes on your timeline and the latest data access. You may want to revoke some or all of these abilities. The only ones you cannot revoke are the ones listed under the app needs section. 

MSTA does not have a mobile phone connected to our Facebook account, though you may choose to do so. If you do, make sure it is a number you intend to keep for a long time. 

Now on to Privacy Settings. 

MST recommends setting your default privacy to friends. You can choose to set your custom to private, but that does take additional work and would mean you would have to create a list. You can Google how to do that. 

How you connect is very important. If you click on the edit Settings beside How You connect, you'll want to make sure your settings match the ones we suggest or are more conservative and are set entirely to just Friends. 

Timeline and Tagging is perhaps the MOST CRUCIAL one to set. 

This is the one that lets you review tags BEFORE they are highlighted and linked in blue. Again, you can just copy the recommended settings.

If you use apps (as we discussed above), you can also edit them in the Ads, Apps and Website section.

You will want to make sure nothing is clicked in the how people bring your infor to the apps they use. This means you do not want the apps and/or websites to view your profile information. "If you don't want apps and websites to access other categories of information (like your friend list, gender or info you've made public), you can turn off all Platform apps. But remember, you will not be able to use any games or apps yourself." MSTA encourages you to turn these off, unless you are a Farmville addict.  

MSTA also highly recommends turning OFF personal search (which means leaving the box unchecked) This is where people get in the most trouble. They don't realize this is enabled and they go and search for something inappropriate on Bing and bam! It's all over their Facebook page.  

This section also where you can hide yourself from Google and other search engines. You will want to make sure the enable box IS NOT clicked.

To reiterate, Facebook constantly updates and makes changes to these settings so please make sure to review them regularly. Questions? Leave them in the comments below or email Aurora at ameyer@msta.org

Comments

[Ibnana2004]

Thank you for the valuable information. Going to check all these setting.

[Aurora Meyer]

You are very welcome! Please feel free to share with your colleagues and friends!
-Aurora

[Jen]

Thank you so much for explaining this!!! It was so helpful.

[Aurora Meyer]

Of course, Jen! lease feel free to share with your colleagues and friends!
-Aurora