The Easy Way to Control Your Facebook Privacy Settings

While Facebook has made progress in simplifying its privacy settings, most users still find

• The default settings are too public (who wants to share their family members with everyone on the web?).
• Changing privacy settings is too complex (there are still over 10 screens to manage your privacy).

PrivacyDefender provides an alternative to those users who need a simpler solution including

• An easy to understand, graphical view of how public you are
• One-click selection of how private you want to be with a preview so you know what you’re choosing
• The assurance that ReputationDefender will scrutinize and alert you of any new changes to Facebook’s privacy settings (e.g. there is a rumored location feature about to be released that can track where you are when you post to Facebook).

We created PrivacyDefender based on customer requests, and we wanted to extend an offering to the rest of the Facebook users. Facebook has gathered enormous power and an unprecedented amount of information about you. However, it is also a company that is under pressure to make money. That pressure may lead to decisions that are not in the best interest of its more privacy-aware users, so we need someone to help those users continue to use Facebook to engage with their friends and family without sacrificing their privacy or risking identity theft.

PrivacyDefender is absolutely free.

PrivacyDefender works through a combination of a Facebook application and a bookmark for your browser. Here’s how it works.

1. Go to the PrivacyDefender home page, http://apps.facebook.com/privacydefender (you may need to log in to Facebook first).
2. On the home page, there are instructions on how to add the bookmark to your browser toolbar. For Internet Explorer users, you will have to right-click on the PrivacyDefender grey button and select "Add to Favorites". For all other browsers, you can simply drag the grey button to your bookmark toolbar.
3. Once you have saved the bookmark, just select it in your browser to evaluate your current settings.
4. Once you review your settings, you can choose which privacy level you prefer. Do this by dragging the arrow at the bottom of the page to your preferred privacy level. You will see a preview of the changes. To customize your settings further, you can click on areas in the chart. To apply the changes, click the “Fix My Privacy” button.
5. Your privacy settings will then be updated. If you prefer, you can select another level and change them again!

If Facebook’s privacy settings change or Facebook releases a new feature, we will alert all users of PrivacyDefender about the changes, so you don’t have to constantly monitor Facebook. We will update PrivacyDefender to handle the new settings. When you re-access PrivacyDefender, we can guide and advise you on how to update the new settings. We won’t make any changes without your permission.

You can get PrivacyDefender on Facebook by going to http://apps.facebook.com/privacydefender. Or you can go straight to http://www.privacydefender.net.

We want to help protect your privacy, so we do not store any information about your profile or your settings. We will only send you messages alerting you of new privacy changes. You can view ReputationDefender’s privacy policy here: http://www.reputationdefender.com/privacypolicy.

Nonetheless, we do encourage you to share the application with your friends to protect their privacy.

There is a Facebook share button at the top of PrivacyDefender. If you click on it, you will see a dialog asking you for permission to post to your wall. Alternatively, you can choose to send a message to a select group of friends. Both of these options use the standard Facebook sharing feature, so you may be familiar with it. We will only post to your wall if you opt-in

We wanted to offer privacy levels that correspond to how you might use Facebook. Also, there are certain settings that we think, due to the risk of identity theft, should always be private, like your birthday and contact info.

• My Friends: This is for users who use Facebook primarily for their friends and family and are not interested in growing their network. This will set everything to be only visible to the user or his or her friends.
• My Social Network: This is for users who want to use Facebook to grow their social network but still do not want anything to be publicly available on the web. This will allow friends of friends to see more of your info.
• Everyone But Not Everything: This is for users who want to use Facebook as part of their public, online persona but still don’t want to make everything public, like their phone numbers or email addresses. This will set most of your profile to be visible to everyone, so be careful what you enter!

The circular graph is used to show your current privacy settings as well as previewing your future settings.The graph has concentric circles to show how public each piece of your Facebook profile is. A pie slice represents each piece of your profile.

Profile pie slices:

• Name: This shows who can see your name.
• Birthday: This shows who can see your date of birth.
• Profile Picture: This shows who can see your profile picture.
• Posts: This shows who can see your status updates and wall posts that you or someone else makes on your wall
• Comments: This shows who can comment on your status updates and wall posts.
• Other Profile Info: This includes the other info in your profile like relationship status, religious views, etc.
• Photos & Videos: This shows who can see your photos and videos.
• Friends & Family: This shows who can see your list of friends and your family members.
• Contact Info: This shows who can see your email addresses, phone numbers, IM screen names, etc.

Privacy circles:

• Me: This info is only visible to you.
• Friends: This info is only visible to your immediate friends.
• Friends of Friends: This info is visible to any friends of your friends. This exponentially grows the number of users who can see your info.
• Everyone: This info is visible to either your networks (which can often be huge) or anyone on the web

There are some additional settings that don’t fit into the graph but are extremely important to your privacy.

• Facebook partners can/cannot use your public info: This setting shows whether you are participating in Facebook’s Instant Personalization feature, which allows select Facebook partners to use the public info in your Facebook profile and friend list to personalize your experience on their web site. For all privacy levels, we turn this option off.
• Friends can/cannot share your info: Even if you have made your info available to only your friends, they can actually then share your info with applications that they use. We view this setting as a potential privacy leak of your info, so for all privacy levels, we turn this option off.
• Advertisers can/cannot show your info to friends in ads: This setting shows whether you have allowed advertisers to include your info to friends in their ads. For all privacy levels, we turn this option off.

• For Firefox: Drag the grey button to the bookmarks bar OR right-click on it and click “Bookmark this Link”
• For Internet Explorer: Right-click the grey button and click “Add to Favorites”.
• For Safari or Chrome: Drag the grey button to the bookmarks bar.

This is a toolbar available in browsers to store commonly used bookmarks usually appearing directly above or below the address bar. If you can’t see it, try one of these options:

• For Safari or Chrome: show the bookmarks bar by clicking “View” | “Show Bookmarks Bar”. Then then you can drag the grey button to the toolbar.
• For Firefox: show the bookmarks bar by clicking “View” | “Toolbars” | “Bookmarks Toolbar”. Then you can drag the grey button to the toolbar.
• For Internet Explorer: you won’t be able to drag the grey button, but you can right-click the grey button and click “Add to Favorites”. It will then appear under you "Favorites" menu where you can click it.