Update 7/25/2009: there’s a new rumor about Facebook granting 3rd party companies permission to use your photos. This is completely false.
The economy sucks and employers are just looking for excuses to trim the fat. Especially true if that fat isn’t attached the company yet. One of the fastest ways to be rejected from a new job or to be fired from your current job is to leak sensitive or objectionable information on your Facebook profile.
Never mind that social media spying is unethical in its own right, no, no, it rests squarely on our shoulders to carry the burden of witless and mistrusting employers.
But because humans are human regardless of what color tie we wear to work or just how nice we look in that suit, we’re all going to post something stupid to Facebook sometime. Don’t let the corporate fat cats catch you at it. Put the lock-down on your Facebook this instant.
Step One – Make a List
Now, the typical Facebook user has three groups of people as “friends”. You have your real friends, the ones who would have your back even against a hoard of Zombie Elmos. These need no privacy settings and should be your “base group” of friends. Then you have those jackasses you met once at a party and friended you for the +1 friend stat… or maybe your not-so-nice family members fall into this category. Then you have everyone else – the outside world or people you know from that concert back when weed was still kinda illegal everywhere.
The latter two groups of friends should be put in their own “list”. Besides giving you a great way to arbitrarily rank your friends, lists also give you great privacy benefits on Facebook. You create one by clicking on the “Home” page – the one with the master news feed from all over Facebook. Then find your “News Feed” sidebar, here:
Click on “More” and at the bottom of the list, just above “Less” you’ll see “Create New List”. Click on this, it pops up a window asking you who you want to add to this list and what you want to call the list.
Once you’ve sorted out all your friends, you can start limiting what they (and the list they belong to) can see. First, find this menu option on the toolbar (it’s under Settings next to Logout and Search at the top of the page):
Once you click on this, the Privacy Overview page appears with four options (not to mention, the ever-useful “Block List” – put someone on that, and it’s like you never existed):
Profile is where you should go first. Click on that and you’ll see each part of your profile has an individual privacy setting (there are two pages). I have ALL of mine set to “Friends Only”.
What this privacy setting says is “Only my Friends can see my Basic Info section (name, school, etc) – and the people on my Limited Profile list can’t see it.”
If you click on “Edit Custom Settings”, you can change things up a bit, in case you want something harmless to be visible:
You have a lot of freedom here – you can have anyone on Facebook able to access this portion of your profile, Friends of Friends (not necessarily your friends), Friends Only, or Networks. For example, say you just moved from Denver to Chicago, you can add the Chicago network to your profile and make your basic info available to THAT network only and exclude the Denver network. Useful for screening out “objectionable” bits and pieces if your school or employer has a network.
You can also specifically exclude certain lists (like the ones you just created) OR people from seeing that aspect of your profile. However, combinations can be tricky. For example, in order for someone to stop seeing your Status Updates, you have to block them from both your Wall and your Status and Links Updates.
There are TWO pages of privacy settings to set, so get to it.
Step 2 – Applications
Finally, once you’re done with that, you have to set the applications settings. Why? When one of your jackass friends adds one of those jackass-rating applications like “what kind of penguin are you if a clown gets shot out of a cannon quiz” – then according to Facebook:
“When a friend of yours allows an application to access their information, that application may also access any information about you that your friend can already see.”
Great. So, you can avoid all the crappy applications you want, but still be giving away your information. How do you block it?
Go back to the Privacy Overview page (the one with four options and the block tool) by clicking on “Settings -> Privacy Settings” from the top menu again and click on “Applications”. Click on the “Settings” tab, because really – the disclaimer is mostly jibber-jabber and I don’t have time for that crap.
Before I unchecked all these, all of them were active… so who knows what shady businesses have personally identifiable information about me, where they are, or what they intend to do with it. My suggestion is to turn all of these things off. All of my applications still work fine.
In order to opt out completely, you have to turn off ALL 3rd party applications individually, which… is frankly a waste of time. Just find the ones you have no idea about (IE – not Pandora, Twitter, etc…) and selectively turn off what you are afraid to share. This may break some of your apps.
Because I’m sort of twisted, I imagine that the real purpose for at least one app has been to secretly gather as much info as possible about potential hires and selling it to HR folks for a premium. If a hiring company has gone to so much trouble that they’re willing to build a Facebook app to spy on me directly or through my friends, then, I really don’t want to work there in the first place.
Step 3 – Feed Updates
Imagine if you will, the most gawdawful picture of yourself – and someone has tagged you in it. You comment “LOLZ”. This now appears as a “status update” in the global feed. Everyone who can see your feed can see the gawdawful picture.
Your friends see it. Your mom sees it. Your mom calls your grandma, and she sees it. You get a call and have to explain why your two-piece bathing suit turned into a one-piece on some beach in Tijuana while mom and grandma sob into the phone.
No more. Select “News Feed and Wall” from the main Privacy Overview page (the one with the four options):
I have mine set liberally because these aren’t as important to me, but they might be to you, so… lock ‘em down as you want.
Step 4 – Public Search Pages = Good Public Face
The final step in locking down your Facebook profile is to create a public search page for yourself. This might seem counter-intuitive, but so long as you don’t post random, disturbing, objectionable pictures as your profile picture, this is definitely a good idea to show a company that you know how to hold your cards close to home.
Go back to the Privacy Overview page and select “Search”. Here’s what you’ll see:
I set my search page visible to EVERYONE because anyone should be able to find me this way – especially an employer snooping on Facebook. I’ve only turned on the options for things I can control – a friend and message link and my profile picture. My fan pages and my friends pictures, I can’t control, so I leave those off, lest my employer see I’m friends with Bob Ross or that I’m a fan of medicinal marijuana’s page. I don’t use it myself, but an employer could easily freak the hell out.
Finally…
Only friend people you know – there’s a big thing on social networks to “find and friend” everyone on the social network and it’s all just BS designed to make someone feel good. Unfriend people who could potentially hurt you by sharing information you don’t want employers to have – ex girlfriends you don’t have a good report with, for example. Most of all – keep your profile picture un-objectionable if you make it visible at ANY level besides Just Friends.
Remember that you have no obligation to show your employer your social media profiles – it’s a major invasion of privacy for them to ask. Respectfully decline.
My former employer has a page on FB that's totally for spying on it's employees. Any time ANYONE on Facebook posts the name "Byerlys" it shows up on that page -- everything involving the conversation! How can excerpts from ppl's private profiles end up on Byerly's page for them to read? How can they get away with this? They're constantly calling ppl into the office and repremanding them for FB postings and no one could figure out how they're seeing it when everyone's settings are set as private as they can be!. How can they stop this invasion of privacy. I'm steaming angry!
Psychotic Resumes is a Gen-Y (Millennial) job survival guide created by Nick Armstrong to help new professionals build stronger resumes and cover letters so they can find a better job. It's our goal to help Gen-Y do better at interviews and on the job, promoting strong leadership, entrepreneurship, and common sense.
Calling Bullsh!t – Stop Employer Facebook Spying Today
Update 7/25/2009: there’s a new rumor about Facebook granting 3rd party companies permission to use your photos. This is completely false.
The economy sucks and employers are just looking for excuses to trim the fat. Especially true if that fat isn’t attached the company yet. One of the fastest ways to be rejected from a new job or to be fired from your current job is to leak sensitive or objectionable information on your Facebook profile.
Never mind that social media spying is unethical in its own right, no, no, it rests squarely on our shoulders to carry the burden of witless and mistrusting employers.
But because humans are human regardless of what color tie we wear to work or just how nice we look in that suit, we’re all going to post something stupid to Facebook sometime. Don’t let the corporate fat cats catch you at it. Put the lock-down on your Facebook this instant.
Step One – Make a List
Now, the typical Facebook user has three groups of people as “friends”. You have your real friends, the ones who would have your back even against a hoard of Zombie Elmos. These need no privacy settings and should be your “base group” of friends. Then you have those jackasses you met once at a party and friended you for the +1 friend stat… or maybe your not-so-nice family members fall into this category. Then you have everyone else – the outside world or people you know from that concert back when weed was still kinda illegal everywhere.
The latter two groups of friends should be put in their own “list”. Besides giving you a great way to arbitrarily rank your friends, lists also give you great privacy benefits on Facebook. You create one by clicking on the “Home” page – the one with the master news feed from all over Facebook. Then find your “News Feed” sidebar, here:
Click on “More” and at the bottom of the list, just above “Less” you’ll see “Create New List”. Click on this, it pops up a window asking you who you want to add to this list and what you want to call the list.
Once you’ve sorted out all your friends, you can start limiting what they (and the list they belong to) can see. First, find this menu option on the toolbar (it’s under Settings next to Logout and Search at the top of the page):
Once you click on this, the Privacy Overview page appears with four options (not to mention, the ever-useful “Block List” – put someone on that, and it’s like you never existed):
Profile is where you should go first. Click on that and you’ll see each part of your profile has an individual privacy setting (there are two pages). I have ALL of mine set to “Friends Only”.
What this privacy setting says is “Only my Friends can see my Basic Info section (name, school, etc) – and the people on my Limited Profile list can’t see it.”
If you click on “Edit Custom Settings”, you can change things up a bit, in case you want something harmless to be visible:
You have a lot of freedom here – you can have anyone on Facebook able to access this portion of your profile, Friends of Friends (not necessarily your friends), Friends Only, or Networks. For example, say you just moved from Denver to Chicago, you can add the Chicago network to your profile and make your basic info available to THAT network only and exclude the Denver network. Useful for screening out “objectionable” bits and pieces if your school or employer has a network.
You can also specifically exclude certain lists (like the ones you just created) OR people from seeing that aspect of your profile. However, combinations can be tricky. For example, in order for someone to stop seeing your Status Updates, you have to block them from both your Wall and your Status and Links Updates.
There are TWO pages of privacy settings to set, so get to it.
Step 2 – Applications
Finally, once you’re done with that, you have to set the applications settings. Why? When one of your jackass friends adds one of those jackass-rating applications like “what kind of penguin are you if a clown gets shot out of a cannon quiz” – then according to Facebook:
“When a friend of yours allows an application to access their information, that application may also access any information about you that your friend can already see.”
Great. So, you can avoid all the crappy applications you want, but still be giving away your information. How do you block it?
Go back to the Privacy Overview page (the one with four options and the block tool) by clicking on “Settings -> Privacy Settings” from the top menu again and click on “Applications”. Click on the “Settings” tab, because really – the disclaimer is mostly jibber-jabber and I don’t have time for that crap.
Before I unchecked all these, all of them were active… so who knows what shady businesses have personally identifiable information about me, where they are, or what they intend to do with it. My suggestion is to turn all of these things off. All of my applications still work fine.
In order to opt out completely, you have to turn off ALL 3rd party applications individually, which… is frankly a waste of time. Just find the ones you have no idea about (IE – not Pandora, Twitter, etc…) and selectively turn off what you are afraid to share. This may break some of your apps.
Because I’m sort of twisted, I imagine that the real purpose for at least one app has been to secretly gather as much info as possible about potential hires and selling it to HR folks for a premium. If a hiring company has gone to so much trouble that they’re willing to build a Facebook app to spy on me directly or through my friends, then, I really don’t want to work there in the first place.
Step 3 – Feed Updates
Imagine if you will, the most gawdawful picture of yourself – and someone has tagged you in it. You comment “LOLZ”. This now appears as a “status update” in the global feed. Everyone who can see your feed can see the gawdawful picture.
Your friends see it. Your mom sees it. Your mom calls your grandma, and she sees it. You get a call and have to explain why your two-piece bathing suit turned into a one-piece on some beach in Tijuana while mom and grandma sob into the phone.
No more. Select “News Feed and Wall” from the main Privacy Overview page (the one with the four options):
I have mine set liberally because these aren’t as important to me, but they might be to you, so… lock ‘em down as you want.
Step 4 – Public Search Pages = Good Public Face
The final step in locking down your Facebook profile is to create a public search page for yourself. This might seem counter-intuitive, but so long as you don’t post random, disturbing, objectionable pictures as your profile picture, this is definitely a good idea to show a company that you know how to hold your cards close to home.
Go back to the Privacy Overview page and select “Search”. Here’s what you’ll see:
I set my search page visible to EVERYONE because anyone should be able to find me this way – especially an employer snooping on Facebook. I’ve only turned on the options for things I can control – a friend and message link and my profile picture. My fan pages and my friends pictures, I can’t control, so I leave those off, lest my employer see I’m friends with Bob Ross or that I’m a fan of medicinal marijuana’s page. I don’t use it myself, but an employer could easily freak the hell out.
Finally…
Only friend people you know – there’s a big thing on social networks to “find and friend” everyone on the social network and it’s all just BS designed to make someone feel good. Unfriend people who could potentially hurt you by sharing information you don’t want employers to have – ex girlfriends you don’t have a good report with, for example. Most of all – keep your profile picture un-objectionable if you make it visible at ANY level besides Just Friends.
Remember that you have no obligation to show your employer your social media profiles – it’s a major invasion of privacy for them to ask. Respectfully decline.
Good luck – let me know if I’ve missed anything.