Social Media allows us to reconnect with old friends, keep in touch with family and friends from a distance and share information about ourselves. But, as we have been learning recently, the information we share may well be used for purposes that were never intended. In this article Facebook staff share information that you can use to protect yourself and manage your online life more effectively.
You’ve been hearing a lot about Facebook lately and how your data is being used. While this information can sometimes be confusing and technical, it’s important to know that you are in control of your Facebook, what you see, what you share, and what people see about you.
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There are many things you have control over that can help make your Facebook experience better for you. One easy step to check the privacy of the information on your profile is to take a Privacy Checkup that helps you review who you’re posting to, manage or delete apps you’ve connected to your account, and edit the privacy of the information on your profile.
Now, let’s take a deeper dive into the ways you can control your information:
Control the posts you see from friends or family:
- If you Snooze a person, their content will temporarily be removed from your News Feed for 30 days.
- You can Unfollow someone if you no longer want to see any posts from an individual.
- If you want to see more of someone, you can add them to your See First list so their content appears at the top of your News Feed.
- Click on the three little dots in the upper right-hand corner for more controls.
You likely have seen advertisements in your News Feed. Advertising is what keeps Facebook free to everyone who uses it. Facebook’s goal is to ensure that the ads you see are as relevant to you as the content you see from friends and family. Your information is utilized to show you more relevant ads, but Facebook never sells your data or tells advertisers who you are.
Control the advertisements you see:
- Manage interests or information that isn’t relevant or that you don’t want Facebook using.
- Stop seeing ads based on the websites or apps you visit off Facebook.
- Understand why you’re seeing a specific ad.
- You can also hide ads or an advertiser, or report an ad directly from each ad.
- All of these features can be found in the menu in the upper right corner of the ad, or in Ad Preferences in the Settings Menu.
So that’s the content you see, but how about what you share — or in other words what people or companies can see about you? It’s important to understand who sees your information and how you can control this.
Control what people see, including:
- Check your settings to control what past and future posts people can see, who can see your photos, friends list, timeline content, email, and phone number.
- Each time you decide to share a post, you can select which audience you want to share with, including the public, all of your friends, only specific friends, or just you.
- You can check and edit the apps that have access to your information or that you’ve signed into. You can also remove the apps you no longer use.
- Use Facebook’s Activity Log to review your entire timeline and delete old posts.
- These features can be found and modified at any time in the Privacy Shortcuts under the Help Center icon or in the Settings Menu.
So those are a few of the ways you can control your experience on Facebook. Now more than ever, we understand the importance of helping people improve their Facebook experience by giving them the controls to do so.
Read more about data privacy here
