CARMICHAEL -- If you and your teenagers are Facebook users and are not aware of the ways in which Facebook’s new mandatory profile Timeline may change how your information is shared, or were caught off guard, Kammy Burleson, of YNOTWeb, in Carmichael, offers some guidance to protect privacy.
"For minor children the default setting should be 'Friends' for all sharing options, rather than 'Everyone'. Beware that on their 18th birthdays the system automatically switches sharing to 'Everyone'," Burleson said.
Below are some of the critical steps Burleson recommends parents review with their children:
- Review Privacy Settings (upper top right hand corner arrow) and make sure they are all set to “Friends only”. The posts shared when your child had fewer friends, will be shared with all current Facebook friends accepted since. To hide posts from “Timeline” view, go to the “pencil” in the upper right hand corner of each post, and click “hide from Timeline”.
- Enable “Timeline review” by clicking on “How tags work” on the privacy settings page, and click on “Timeline Review” and click, “Enable”. This will allow you to review posts that you are tagged in before they are posted to your Timeline. Unfortunately, this does not stop the tags from being visible elsewhere in Facebook.
- Limit the audience for viewing posts of your timeline. If you enable this tool, content on your timeline you've shared with “Friends of Friends”(the default for kids) or “Public/Everyone” (default for adults) will change to just “Friends”. You can always go back to posts and change them manually to “Friends of Friends”.
- The map has all of the places you have previously checked into through Facebook. For users under 18, location sharing is turned off by default and only friends can see “check ins”. If, however, they have enabled location sharing, they should take a look at the map and consider removing location data.
- You’ll notice that with Timeline a new button on the status update bar called Life Event appears. In this way, Timeline offers a place to add photos, dates and a back story about things you didn’t include in Facebook before (likely because they happened before you joined Facebook). Consider carefully what to add.
Parent Resources
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