Boomer Bardo

25% Web Services Discount for Social Media for Adults Class

2010-09-03T20:15:12Z

To All Students in the Social Media for Adults Class

It has been my pleasure to have you as my student in this first
Social Media for Adults class at Richland College!

It has been a large class and there was a huge amount of information to cover. I hope that everyone now has some basic tools for navigating basic Social Media: Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Also, as a result of this class all of you now have the tools in place to expand your use of Social Media for personal and business use! And have the knowledge regarding how to use Social Media – and how Social Media works within the general context of internet usage.

Our Boomer Program Social Media Class Group on LinkedIn continues to accumulate Resources (look in Discussions). There are now four pages of resources listed.

I will leave the Boomer Program Social Media Class Group on LinkedIn groups active for your use; and also our group on Ning. These are your groups! Use them to network and exchange resources. This is Social Media in action.

I will be teaching a more complete course on Business Internet at Richland College in the Spring Semester on Saturdays in 2011, Feb 12 – March 12 from 9am until 1pm. Class Title: Internet Toolkit for Business Owners.

I have enjoyed meeting each of you! Let stay in touch?

Dorian Karthauser

My Pandamonium SEO-Marketing

Instructor, Social Media for Adults

Details – August 7 Class

2010-08-06T17:49:52Z

Topics To Be Covered Aug 7:

We will have more fun this week! LOL

Setting up the Facebook Privacy Options (last week’s class) is tedious and boring. But, it needed to be done – and understood by – social networkers. The Good News: Once you understand the Facebook Privacy Options – you can go on any social networking site and configure the options with confidence!
Ask any Questions Regarding Facebook Use for Social Networking.
You will create a Facebook Business Page.
You will create a LinkedIn account.
You will create PR content for promoting your profile and/or business on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is a vital part of Social Networking in the 21st Century. It is the Social Networking site for Job Seekers and Small Business. If you do not have a small business – and are not looking for a job currently – then this is the perfect time to begin growing your LinkedIn contacts and expanding your Profile on LinkedIn! LinkedIn (unlike Facebook) is very easy to use. It’s better to have a thriving LinkedIn presence and not need it – than to really need a LinkedIn presence and have to begin building it from scratch. You will learn how to be a LinkedIn pro – with minimal effort.

Top Photo Credit: Facebook Old Fogies – Illustration by John Cuneo for TIME

Homework for Sat 8-7 Boomer Program Class

2010-08-03T14:14:55Z

Please Read and Study the New Posts in the Boomer Program category.

The most pressing issue that most Boomers have in getting started in Social Media is: Privacy Settings.

How can I protect myself and my extended family?
How can I separate my business presence from my personal social networking presence?
Facebook has the most complicated Privacy Settings of any social network (and it keeps changing!)
If you were not aware of any issues regarding Privacy Settings in Facebook – please use this opportunity to educate yourself!

Social Networking is fun and great for business! With the right privacy safeguards in place – then we can get the results we really want.

Please use the Comments Form (‘Speak Your Mind’) below to send any questions to the Instructor? See you Saturday!

Next Class: Sat 8-7-10

Topics: Questions Regarding Facebook use, Setting up a Facebook Business Page, Setting up a LinkedIn account and promoting your profile and business on LinkedIn.

HOW TO Use Facebook for Professional Networking

2010-08-03T13:34:16Z

Source: http://mashable.com/2009/08/14/facebook-networking/

Boris Epstein is the CEO and Founder of BINC, a Professional Search Firm that specializes in the Software Marketplace. Boris shares his thoughts about the recruitment industry, job hunting and career advice at AskBinc.com.

Ask anybody why they use Facebook, and most people will respond with reasons like staying in touch with friends, or being able to share pictures. Rarely does one’s professional life ever get mentioned when describing the social network. When it comes to business networking, LinkedIn( ) tends to take all the thunder, and Facebook ( ) is generally written off as a place just for fun. Yet, perhaps that’s a mistake.

Facebook, after all, has 250 million active users compared to about 44 million for LinkedIn, and even though the atmosphere is clearly not as focused on business, there are still a ton of opportunities for professional networking that business users would be remiss to pass up. Once you look beyond the obvious social features like sharing pictures and poking friends, there are plenty of ways to tap into the professional community on the world’s largest social network.

In this post we’ll talk about how to setup your Facebook for professional use, how to find others to network with, Facebook features that work for professional networking, and ways to maximize the value from those features.

Setting up your Facebook for business networking

If you’re like most people, your personal and professional lives have already blended. You share your personal stories and pictures with your work colleagues, you discuss both work and your personal life on your blog and Twitter( ), and you’ve probably let go of the notion that professional and personal must be kept completely separate.

But even with that blurring of our work and social lives, most of us still want some separation, and I would recommend actually splitting the two on Facebook. Once split, you can continue to reap the social benefits of Facebook with your friends and family while simultaneously connecting with your professional colleagues.

Here’s how to split the two.

– Go to your friends list by clicking on the Friends tab -> All Friends at the top of your Facebook page.

– Click the “Create a New List” button and create one called Professional.

– You can now go through your entire friend list and add all of your professional contacts into this new and separate business list.

– Once you’re done, navigate to your profile privacy settings by clicking on the Settings link in the top right corner of your Facebook; then click on privacy; then click on profile.

On the profile privacy settings page you can begin slicing and dicing your Facebook world into personal and professional segments by restricting access to various parts of your profile using your newly created friend list. For example, if you don’t want your professional friends to see any of your pictures, click on “edit photo album privacy settings.” In the “who can see this” drop down, click on “customize” and then in the “except these people” field type in your newly formed professional friends list. Now only your personal friends will be able to see your pictures.

Though these settings can get fairly complicated because of their granularity, you can control your entire Facebook experience from this area of the site and decide what parts of your personal life you would like your professional friends to be able to see. Bear in mind that there are no best practices here. Meaning, if you don’t want your professional friends to see your wall comments, don’t let them. If you don’t want your professional friends to see your pictures, don’t let them. It’s your world and you can set it up exactly how you like.

Using Facebook groups for networking

One way to professionally benefit from Facebook’s enormous user base and to grow your professional network is to participate in Facebook Groups. Facebook Groups is a feature that allows Facebook users to connect, discuss and network with each other within the context of a common interest or topic.

Finding groups

There are groups on Facebook representing just about every topic under the sun. To find the right group for your professional aspiration, think of topics that will motivate you, allow you to connect with others of professional interest, and will allow you to gain insight into your industry/skill set – groups around these topics are the ones where you’ll find professionals you can network with.

Now that you have a direction in mind, enter your keyword into the search box on Facebook, and click on the “Groups” filter to the left of the results. You can also filter down the displayed groups by drilling into a number of sub categories, including business (a good bet for many professional groups), common interest, geography, Internet( ) and technology, and organizations.

There are, of course, other ways to find Facebook Groups. Here are a few techniques that should give you plenty of groups to get started with.

– If you have friends whose professional advancements you respect, go to their profile page and click on their info tab. Towards the bottom of the page, you’ll see links to all of the groups to which they belong.

– On the main page of any Facebook Group, there are links to several other similar or related groups.

– Conduct an Internet search for “popular Facebook Groups” coupled with some of the keywords that interest you. You’ll often uncover blog posts, articles and people tweeting about a variety of groups, some of which may interest you.

Once you find a group that interests you, it’s a good idea to evaluate whether or not it will be a good fit before joining and pouring too much time into it.

What to look for in a professional group

There are millions of groups on Facebook, so how many should you join and which ones? Joining too many might prove to be unmanageable, so it’s a good idea to only join the ones that you can actually see yourself participating in.

Below is a list of the features you’ll find in each Facebook Group and what to look for in each to determine whether a group is quality enough to be worth joining.

Recent News – This section contains news from group administrators that is either about the group itself or is about a topic that might interest the group. Is it up to date? Is it useful information or just self-promotion?

Member Listings – Lists all group members including their profile photos, location and link to their profile page. This is an easy access way to send a message to a specific group member OR to request them as a friend. You can also use this tool to evaluate the group before joining. Does the group attract people with similar backgrounds and interests to yours? Can you see yourself giving information to and appreciating information from these other members? Do they seem like people you would value interacting with?

Discussion Board – The group’s discussion board allows members to engage in a discussion about topics listed by other group members. Before joining, use the discussion board to measure group activity and member engagement. Are discussions recent? How many are there? Are they interesting and on-topic? You should contribute to an existing discussion or start your own, once you’ve joined.

Wall Posting – This section is usually for member introductions or job postings. This is a great way to introduce yourself and your interest in this group. How recent are the latest postings? If there is any spam, how quickly is it cleaned up?

Groups also often have photos, videos, links sections, and event listings. You should evaluate these areas for recency and quality of information, as well.

Group participation

Once you’ve joined a group, it’s time to start participating. This is where the real fun begins and the true business value will happen. Below is an example workflow I would recommend following upon joining a group for professional purposes. It’s a great way to show your presence in the group and get some professional networking activity under your belt.

Post an introduction on the Group’s Wall stating your interest in the group. If you’re looking to network, say so. If you’re looking for a job, say so. If you can offer advice, say so. The key here is to make this a simple introduction so the group knows who you are – not an advertisement for yourself or services, which may come across as spam.

Add links to interesting events, pieces of news or blog posts. Anybody who reads them will know you posted them, which will add to your professional branding efforts.

Go to the discussion board and comment on a few topics; don’t be generic. Find a discussion where you could truly add value and help some fellow members with their questions or contribute to some discussions with your thoughts.

Post a topic for discussion. Ask a question or propose a thought-provoking topic of discussion and share your thoughts — the object is to engage your fellow group members. Check back on this discussion often so you can participate and remain an active part of it.

Add friends. Because Facebook was intended to be an online extension of your offline social graph, it is proper etiquette to know somebody before adding them as a friend. While being in the same group might satisfy that requirement for some people, I think it’s a good idea to have some sort of further engagement with a member before requesting them as a friend. Once you’ve engaged someone (such as in a discussion board topic), request them as a friend but include a personal note letting them know you appreciated the interaction. That way, they will have some context for the request and will be more likely to accept. Once you’re friends, make sure to add them to your professional friend list so that you are able to maintain that line between social and professional.

Now that you’ve gone through this workflow for each group you’ve joined, you can now consider yourself to be an active member. So what’s next? Networking! Come back to each group often to post new links and videos, engage in discussions or start your own. You should also invite other existing contacts to join the group as a way to help spread the word and keep the group active. Also remember to befriend those with whom you’ve been active and take your professional relationship to the next level.

Once you have the basics down, professional networking on Facebook is very similar to professional networking in real life. The same rules and etiquette apply. As you build your professional network on Facebook you’ll be able to use those contacts for job hunting, business development, and more.

Conclusion

Although Facebook was built as a social network and most people treat it as such – there is a tremendous amount of professional value that can be gained there. Once you’re a member of a few groups and have completed the introductory workflow for each one, the professional value of Facebook should be evident and ready to be fully realized. Be creative, have fun, and remember: What you put into things is what you get out of them, so always try to stay active!

More Facebook resources from Mashable:

- The Journalist’s Guide to Facebook
- Facebook Pages vs Facebook Groups: What’s the Difference?
- HOW TO: Build Your Personal Brand on Facebook

Tips For Your Profile To Stay Safe From Scammers

2010-08-03T13:30:00Z

See at: Facebook Impostors – Tips For Your Profile To Stay Safe From Scammers

by Saikat Basu on Oct. 25th, 2009

Where you go, we follow. That’s the motto of the scammer brigade; those invisible citizens of the web underworld. They populate our inboxes, our blog comments, our forums and not surprisingly, our social networks. What’s their loot? It’s our information.

Social sites like Facebook are built around communities. In the real world, a community is a safe haven, but it’s not so in the digital world because of its faceless nature and facebook impostors. Social hacking is a term that was born from this very phenomenon. Just to give you an example…

You get a link on your profile from a friend (or a username which sounds like a friend). It’s just a casual click on that link which lures you to a web page asking for some personal details. A person who is not aware of terms like phishing or malware falls prey to this cleverly disguised scam attack from Facebook impostors. Malware links can even infiltrate your accounts and leech away profile info like passwords and addresses. Or even more seriously, bank account numbers. That itself can set of a domino effect as the others in your contact book start getting attack mails from your account.

Social networking sites like Facebook have a huge user base. Facebook alone has more than 300 million users. Even if a small percentage of infiltration attempts succeed (and they do), you can do the math.

Protecting your Facebook profile from scammers and spammers requires serious ammo. The first fortifications are of course the security firewalls and countermeasures employed by Facebook itself. But just like any other war, the foot soldier is the most important piece around which the battle can turn. The foot soldier is you and what you do to protect your account. Facebook gives you some privacy controls to help you thwart spammer snoops.

Here’s the checklist on how to configure your profile to protect yourself from scammers –

Stop Facebook Impostors – Configure Your Privacy Settings

This is the first port of call. After you log-in, on the top right corner of the blue bar you will see the Settings link. Hover over it to get the dropdown and the Privacy Settings.

The Privacy page is all about allowing or disallowing others from looking at all the information on your Facebook page. Information can be broadcasted from your profile, a Facebook search result with your name, what gets written on Wall Posts, news feeds of your recent activities, and from the applications you authorize to pull information from your page.

The great thing about Facebook is that it allows us to configure each small part of our profile (see screenshot above). This is what we should be aware of.

Be aware of your friends

Social sites make it very easy to add friends with a click. Soon enough we have an unmanageable bunch. Organizing friends into groups or Friend Lists is one way. Profile views can be set for Everyone, Only Friends, Friends of Friends or customized for specific Friend Lists. You can also exclude certain friends/Friend Lists.
On the Privacy page, click on Profile. Control who gets to see each bit of information by clicking the dropdown and selecting one. You can also click Customize to further fine tune the selections. Never set it to Everyone – that’s like opening the front door. Also, remember that your friends might have other friends who are absolute strangers to you.
One absolute area that you should keep private is the Contact Information. You can set it to No one.
Save all changes.

Be invisible – remove yourself from searches

Given Facebook’s high search listing, anybody (say, scammers) searching for you or some area of related interest would find it easy. When you sign up, the default setting allows everyone to search for you. Later, one way to discourage that is by removing yourself from public search listing and also controlling your visibility from within Facebook.

From the Privacy page, click on Search to access the settings for search. Under the heading Public Search Listing, deselect the option to create a public search listing of your profile.
To cloak yourself further, you can control your search visibility from within Facebook by selecting Only Friends for Search Visibility. And then tighten up security by setting what they get to see in your public profile.

Caution with applications

Third party applications have given Facebook a good name and sometimes have left it red faced too. Third party applications with doubtful roots could be spyware by another name. Applications which you authorize need your profile info to work and sometimes that of your friends in the network (that also goes for apps installed by your friends). To cite another example, quizzes and puzzles are fun but they can influence you to reveal some personal information. So, tread on the side of caution.

From the Privacy page, click on Applications. The Overview describes the situations in which an application accesses your information. From the Settings page you can checkmark the types of information your friends can see about you through applications.
You can also go to the Applications page (click on Applications on the foot bar) and edit the privacy settings for each individual application. A privacy setting controls the status display on your Facebook profile page.

Screen your messages

A scam behind a Facebook impostor’s message is the oldest trick in the scammer’s book. Beware of messages which ask for personal information or cash/donations. Even if you receive a message from a pal asking for sensitive information or monetary help, verify the request with a phone call. You can also do an authenticity check by asking questions which can be back-checked.

Be wary of direct links

Don’t click on direct links that you get in messages or wall postings especially from unknown sources. They could be a ruse to malware sites or fake login sites. Look at each link carefully before being trigger happy with your mouse. A genuine link can be made out by looking up the domain name with a Google search. Though with a shortened URL, it could be a problem. Many links direct the user to a fake Facebook login page which can compromise your password. Facebook usually never asks you to log-in again to view another page.

Community Rip-offs

Joining a community may get you a bunch of contacts in one go. But it can also be a scam trap if the community is a sham. Fake communities could serve as marketing gimmicks, often with the intent of building mass mailing lists. Select your community and look around the member profiles before jumping in.

These are just some of the ways we can guard against scam attacks. The best way of course, is to click logout and pick up the telephone. But that’s like picking up paranoia and ditching the fun of social networking. Simple precautions like choosing a secure password, familiarity with all the security options and safe browsing habits can keep us protected. For more Facebook security tips, check out Mahendra’s post – 10 Solid Tips to Safeguard Your Facebook Privacy.

What other tips do you think can help to keep our guard up? And leave the scammers dry…

(By) Saikat is a techno-adventurer in a writer’s garb. When he is not scouring the net for tech news, you can catch him on his personal blog ruminating about the positves in our world.

Facebook Privacy Checker – See How Exposed Your Facebook Profile Is

2010-08-03T13:03:49Z

Free Web-based Tool
See Exactly What Regular Internet Users Can See from Your Facebook Account

Check out Zesty Facebook Privacy Checking Tool @ hzesty.ca/facebook

from http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/zesty-facebook-privacy-checker/

Recent Facebook privacy settings change caused an outrage among users. The level of exposure it brought to Facebook accounts made many people unhappy. If you are unsure what this update has done to your profile and want to find out which of your Facebook pages are visible publicly head to Zesty Facebook Privacy Checker.

It is remarkably simple website which shows us our Facebook information which regular internet users can view. We start off with entering our Facebook username and clicking on “GO.” The site then shows us our information directory in the lower left pane.

Clicking on each subfield in the directory shows us the information in that directory which internet users can view. For instance clicking on the family members might bring up our Facebook family connections, in case we have not set the privacy preference to hide them.

Zesty Facebook is a great quick way to keep our Facebook privacy in check.

Features:

Very basic and user friendly interface.
Does not require us to give our Facebook account password.
Tells us which parts of our Facebook information are available for viewing by any internet user.
Check out our related articles about Facebook privacy: 10 Solid Tips to Safeguard Your Facebook Privacy and Facebook Impostors – Tips For Your Profile To Stay Safe From Scammers.

Check out Zesty Facebook Privacy Checking Tool @ hzesty.ca/facebook

Facebook’s Social Web – How to Protect Your Privacy

2010-08-03T12:45:01Z

Note: Since this article was published in April 2010, Facebook has simplified (to a certain extent) the Facebook Privacy Settings. However, this article has great info on the implications and potential impact of your Facebook Privacy Settings.

Facebook’s Social Web How to Protect Your Privacy

by JR Raphael, PC World

Apr 22, 2010 7:13 pm

Protecting your privacy on Facebook can feel like a full-time job. The social network has made a habit of tweaking its privacy policies with some regularity — and in many cases, it’s up to you to take proactive steps in order to keep your info out of the public eye.

This week’s introduction of Facebook’s “Open Graph” is no exception. By default, you’re now opted in to the company’s new social sharing services, and this time, they stretch way beyond the confines of Facebook.com.

If you’re comfortable with that, more power to you. But if you’d rather keep your personal preferences private, here’s a step-by-step guide to taking back control.

Facebook’s Social Web and Your Privacy

First, let’s take a quick jog through what we’re actually dealing with here. There are two key pieces to Facebook’s new Web-wide social services. The simpler one is the universal “Like” button (not to be confused with the universal “Indifferent” button, which I keep hoping will be adopted).

The universal “Like” button looks like Facebook’s regular “Like” button, only it appears on blogs and news sites all over the Web. If you click it while on any external Web site, know that you’re authorizing Facebook to publish your activity right onto your Facebook profile (and hence also onto your friends’ news feeds). Any friends of yours who visit the third-party Web site could also see that you were there. Translation: Don’t click “Like” while visiting NakedOiledNannies.com.

That’s the easy part. The second (and slightly more creepy) part is what Facebook calls “instant personalization.” This is a partnership-driven service in which Facebook automatically enables a “personal and social experience” on certain external Web sites.

So what’s that really mean? Here’s how Facebook explains it:

“When you and your friends visit an instantly personalized site, the partner can use your public Facebook information, which includes your name, profile picture, gender, and connections.”

Put into a real-world example, if you sign-on to Pandora — one of Facebook’s initial partners — the site could automatically dip into your Facebook account and pull your favorite bands from your profile. It could then use that info to build specialized stations for you before you can even say “Selena Gomez.”

The external info-sharing doesn’t stop with you, either: Pandora can also notify anyone on your Facebook friend list if a band they’re listening to happens to appear within your Facebook profile. Yes, your co-workers and other professional contacts will soon be privy to your late-night Miley Cyrus jam sessions.

The same concept applies at other partner sites, which thus far include Yelp and Docs.com.

Facebook Privacy Protection Guide

Prefer not to have your info automatically disclosed? There are five steps you need to take.

1. Head to Facebook’s “Applications and Websites” privacy settings page. Look for the option at the very bottom of the page entitled “Instant Personalization.” Uncheck the “Allow” box, then confirm that you want to opt-out.

That causes your personal data to be deleted from the partner sites, but it doesn’t stop your Facebook friends from accessing and sharing it in the future. In order to do that, you also need to manually block each site manually by performing the next three steps:

2. Go to the Facebook Docs app page. Click the link that says “Block Application” — located on the left-hand side, toward the top of the page — and then click “Block Docs” on the confirmation box that appears on your screen.

3. Go to the Pandora app page. Repeat the process from step 2 to block the application.

4. Go to the Yelp app page. Repeat the app-blocking process once more.

Once you’ve done that, head on to the next step:

5. Back on the “Applications” privacy settings page, click on the button to edit the settings for “What your friends can share about you.” Make sure all the boxes there are unchecked — unless, of course, you want your friends to be able to publicly share any of those types of information — then click on “Save Changes.”

But Wait, There’s More…

Those five steps will protect your privacy for now. But Facebook may add more autosharing partner sites in the future.

Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be notified when that happens. But you can keep tabs on this Facebook Help Center page; it lists all the approved partners, so you’ll be able to see if any new ones have been added that may need to be blocked.

Hey, I told you managing this stuff was like a full-time job. And if you think this is bad, just wait till you see what Facebook has planned next.*

*According to satirical cartoonists, anyway.

JR Raphael is a PCWorld contributing editor and the co-founder of eSarcasm. You can find him on Facebook: facebook.com/The.JR.Raphael

See more like this:
facebook,
privacy,
online privacy,
social networks

Safeguard Your Facebook Privacy

2010-08-03T12:35:05Z

10 Solid Tips to Safeguard Your Facebook Privacy – Friend Lists

From www.makeuseof.com by Mahendra Palsule on Sep. 13th, 2009

Facebook statistics show that it has 250 million active users each with an average 120 friends. More than 1 billion photos are uploaded every month by its users, over 70% of whom use applications like games and quizzes in Facebook. Unfortunately, most users don’t know the implications of entering personal information, making friends, and playing games on Facebook.

This guide will show what you can (and cannot) do to safeguard your Facebook privacy.

1. Organize Friends in Lists

What do you do when your boss, mother-in-law, or a casual web acquaintance sends you a friend request on Facebook? Use Friend Lists. Friend Lists are the foundation of your Facebook privacy settings. Select Friends from the top menu, and use the Create link to create friend lists like Co-workers, Family, College Friends, etc. Your friends can’t see your lists, so you can name them whatever you like.

Tip: On your left sidebar, all your friend lists may not show up by default. Click More to see all of them, and drag and drop those you want above the separator.

2. Customize Profile Privacy

Click Settings > Privacy Settings > Profile. Select which parts of your profile will be seen by whom.

If you choose Customize in the drop down, you can be more specific. This is where the Friend Lists you created before become really useful.

Also go to the Contact Information tab and choose how you want your contact information to be shared on the Internet.

3. Set Facebook Privacy Level of Photo Albums

On the Photos tab of your profile page, click Album Privacy. Here again, you can use your Friend Lists to set the privacy for each photo album.

Note that your profile pictures go into a special album that is always visible to ALL your friends.

4. Restrict Search Visibility

Click Privacy > Search to set your visibility when someone searches Facebook for people. This is an important way to safeguard your Facebook privacy. You can also select what will be visible in the search results.

5. Control Automatic Wall Posts and News Feed Updates

Your actions in Facebook such as comments, likes, appear as highlights on ALL your friends’ home pages. You cannot use friend lists here, only turn them on or off.

Go to Privacy > News Feed and Wall and choose whether you want your boss or ex-girlfriend to know that you’re in a relationship.

6. Set Facebook Wall Privacy

Go to your profile page, click Options > Settings under the status box.

Here you can control whether your friends can post to your Wall, and who can see the posts made by your friends.

7. Avoid Appearing in Advertisements

Facebook has two types of advertisements: third-party and Facebook. Third-party advertisements are currently not allowed to use your pictures, but there is a setting to disallow it if it is allowed in the future. Go to Privacy > News Feed and Wall > Facebook Ads tab to turn this off.

The Facebook ads shown to your friends are about ‘social actions’ like becoming a fan of something. You can turn this off at the bottom of the page.

8. Protect Yourself from Friends’ Applications

Go to Privacy > Applications, and click the Settings tab and uncheck all the boxes. These settings control what information about you is visible to applications installed by your friends. By default, these are set to visible. This means that your religious, sexual, and political preferences, pictures, etc. are readily available to one of the million worldwide Facebook application developers, each time any of your friends takes a quiz, plays a game, or runs any other Facebook app. This is obviously a Facebook privacy issue

This is the most commonly misunderstood aspect of Facebook privacy. These settings control what applications installed by your friends can see about you, even if you don’t install the application yourself.

Why is this important? Because these settings will not change anything about what you are sharing with the applications you install yourself. For that, go to the next step.

9. Privacy from Your Applications

There is no way to control what applications see about you; it is an all-or-nothing affair. Take this quiz developed by the American Civil Liberties Union to check what anonymous application developers can know about you and your friends each time you take a quiz.

The Burton Group’s Identity Blog features the Facebook Privacy Mirror, an application that you can use to find out what applications know about you and your friends. If you really want to see exactly what profile data of each of your friends is visible to application developers, Privacy Mirror shows it in detail.

The only thing you can do is to authorize only those applications you require and trust. Go to Settings > Application Settings from the top menu. Change the drop-down from Recently Used to Authorized. Here you can see all the applications you have authorized to get access to ALL your profile information. Remove the ones you no longer need.

Also check the list of applications Allowed to Post and Granted Additional Permissions to remove unwanted ones.

10. Quitting Facebook? Delete, Don’t Just De-Activate Your Account

You can easily deactivate your account in Facebook from the Settings page. But deactivation will retain all your profile information within Facebook, including pictures, friends, etc. If you want to permanently delete your Facebook account, click here to submit a deletion request. Note that:

There is an unspecified delay between submitting your delete request and actual deletion.
If you login to Facebook, your deletion request is automatically cancelled.
There doesn’t seem to be any way to confirm that your request was completed.
Even after permanent deletion, Facebook says that copies of your photos may remain on their servers for technical reasons.

Also, note that once in a while, there is news of a Facebook hack or leak that can expose your information on the Internet. It is better to be safe than sorry by avoiding using Facebook for anything that may embarrass you.

I hope this article gives you a better understanding and insight into Facebook’s privacy.

(By) Mahendra is an Editor at Techmeme, tweets as @ScepticGeek and blogs at Skeptic Geek.

Social Networking Resources

2010-07-31T11:49:09Z

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites List of major active social networking websites

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/01/ten_ways_to_use.html#axzz0vGA6nL3C Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn

LinkedIn Resources

2010-07-31T11:43:35Z

http://learn.linkedin.com/ Learning Center – Features of LinkedIn

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn Wikipedia

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzT3JVUGUzM What is LinkedIn Video

Boomer Bardo

25% Web Services Discount for Social Media for Adults Class

To All Students in the Social Media for Adults Class

It has been my pleasure to have you as my student in this first Social Media for Adults class at Richland College!

Details – August 7 Class

Topics To Be Covered Aug 7:

We will have more fun this week! LOL

Ask any Questions Regarding Facebook Use for Social Networking.

You will create a Facebook Business Page.

You will create a LinkedIn account.

You will create PR content for promoting your profile and/or business on LinkedIn.

Homework for Sat 8-7 Boomer Program Class

Please Read and Study the New Posts in the Boomer Program category.

Next Class: Sat 8-7-10

HOW TO Use Facebook for Professional Networking

Source: http://mashable.com/2009/08/14/facebook-networking/

Setting up your Facebook for business networking

Here’s how to split the two.

Using Facebook groups for networking

Finding groups

What to look for in a professional group

Group participation

Conclusion

More Facebook resources from Mashable:

Tips For Your Profile To Stay Safe From Scammers

See at: Facebook Impostors – Tips For Your Profile To Stay Safe From Scammers

Stop Facebook Impostors – Configure Your Privacy Settings

Be aware of your friends

Be invisible – remove yourself from searches

Caution with applications

Screen your messages

Be wary of direct links

Community Rip-offs

(By) Saikat is a techno-adventurer in a writer’s garb. When he is not scouring the net for tech news, you can catch him on his personal blog ruminating about the positves in our world.

Facebook Privacy Checker – See How Exposed Your Facebook Profile Is

Free Web-based ToolSee Exactly What Regular Internet Users Can See from Your Facebook Account

Check out Zesty Facebook Privacy Checking Tool @ hzesty.ca/facebook

Zesty Facebook is a great quick way to keep our Facebook privacy in check.

Facebook’s Social Web – How to Protect Your Privacy

Facebook’s Social Web How to Protect Your Privacy

Facebook’s Social Web and Your Privacy

Facebook Privacy Protection Guide

But Wait, There’s More…

Safeguard Your Facebook Privacy

10 Solid Tips to Safeguard Your Facebook Privacy – Friend Lists

1. Organize Friends in Lists

3. Set Facebook Privacy Level of Photo Albums

4. Restrict Search Visibility

5. Control Automatic Wall Posts and News Feed Updates

6. Set Facebook Wall Privacy

7. Avoid Appearing in Advertisements

8. Protect Yourself from Friends’ Applications

9. Privacy from Your Applications

10. Quitting Facebook? Delete, Don’t Just De-Activate Your Account

(By) Mahendra is an Editor at Techmeme, tweets as @ScepticGeek and blogs at Skeptic Geek.

Similar Articles on Internet Security

Social Networking Resources

LinkedIn Resources

It has been my pleasure to have you as my student in this first
Social Media for Adults class at Richland College!

Free Web-based Tool
See Exactly What Regular Internet Users Can See from Your Facebook Account