How to keep your Facebook privacy private

How to keep your Facebook privacy private

If you’re like me, you share a lot about yourself with a great many Facebook “friends.” But are they really friends? Can you trust them? And can you trust Facebook?

The answer to those questions depends on how you set up your Facebook-privacy settings. And an important component of those settings is defining what kind of friend you want your various friends to be.

And, of course, even the best privacy settings are pointless if someone hacks into your Facebook account. So you also need to know how to lock down access to your account.

Since this is Windows Secrets and not Android Secrets, I’ll assume you’re accessing Facebook and changing settings in a standard browser.

Take a minute to better secure your account

When jumping into Facebook privacy/security settings, you might be tempted to click the little lock icon on the right side of Facebook’s title bar and select the Privacy Checkup option. That can help, but I think the following instructions will be more helpful.

Start by clicking the triangle just to the right of the lock icon and selecting Settings (see Figure 1). You’ll find the Password option on the default General section (see the page’s left nav column). If you don’t already have a long and strong password, or it’s been years since you changed it, click Password and enter a new one that will be difficult to crack.

Now click the Security heading in the nav column for the following options:

Login Approvals: Also called two-step verification, this setting makes it much more difficult to be hacked. To get into your account, the crook will need your password, your cellphone PIN, and physical possession of your phone.

Check the box next to “Require a security code to access my account from unknown browsers” and then follow the setup wizard.

Once that’s done, every time you — or someone pretending to be you — sign in to your account on a new device or browser, Facebook will text you a code number; you’ll then need that code to complete the sign in process.

Login Alerts: When this option is enabled, you’ll get an email notification whenever your account is first accessed by a browser or app. If you get this email, and you haven’t signed in to Facebook with a new browser or app, you’ll know immediately that you’ve probably been hacked.

Your Browsers and Apps: This shows you a list of browsers and devices you (or someone pretending to be you) have used to access Facebook. It can be a shockingly long list. Best to trim those you’re no longer using. (You might need to enable Login Approvals to populate the list.)

Take a little time to review the other Security Settings options; you might, for example, want to enable a Legacy Contact.

Control who gets to see what information

With your Facebook account reasonably protected from hacking, you’ll now want to keep from sharing too much information — with the wrong people.

Before posting anything on Facebook, take a look at the pull-down menu just to the left of the Post button. It’ll probably say Public, Friends, and either More Options or Custom, as shown in Figure 3. (The official name is the “Who should see this” menu.)

Consider who you want to read this item. If you select Public, your friends can share it with anyone — both on and off Facebook.

If you select Friends, your friends can only share it with other friends of yours. But there’s an exception: When you post a link to something readily available on the Internet — an article, for instance — your friends can share those with anyone. That makes sense; you don’t own that information.

So if you want your words of wisdom to go viral, select Public. If you want to keep it just among friends, select Friends.

Under the Custom setting, you can select other Facebook groups and categories you belong to — for example, Family or Close Friends.

Not every ‘friend’ is a close, personal friend

“Champagne for my true friends. True pain for my sham friends” — David Benioff, 25th Hour.

Contrary to what some believe, Facebook isn’t a popularity contest. There’s really no reward for the most “friends.” Just because the bully who beat you up in Junior High, or some total stranger, sends you a Friend Request doesn’t mean you have to accept it.

If you want to share a piece of yourself with everyone on Facebook, create a public page (such as mine). Anyone can visit it. To create a public page, click that little rectangle in the upper-right corner of the Facebook page and select Create Page. Follow the instructions.

What about the people you’ve already friended — and now wish you hadn’t? Simply unfriend them. If you see them on your timeline, hover the cursor over their name and, when the pop-up window appears, go to the Friends menu and select Unfriend (Figure 4). If they’re not visible on the timeline, search for them on Facebook, go to their page, and pull down the Friends menu and select Unfriend there.

If someone you’ve unfriended starts harassing you on Facebook, click the little lock icon and select “How do I stop someone from bothering me” (Figure 5). Follow the prompts. (I covered this issue in more detail in a PCWorld article.

Setting up tiers of Facebook friends

Unless you believe in the “My life is an open book” philosophy, you’ll want to define your types of friends. Facebook offers categories, and you should really use them.

For instance, you can demote a Friend to an Acquaintance. Use the same steps given above for unfriending someone, but select Acquaintance rather than Unfriend (see Figure 6). That way, you’ll see fewer of their posts popping up on your timeline — although by default you’ll still see some. The Following button in the popup box lets you “unfollow” them.

You can hide certain posts from categories of friends. For example, open the aforementioned “Who should see this?” menu (again, next to the Post button) and look for “Friends except Acquaintances,” as shown in Figure 7. (It might be under More Options.)

It’s important to remember that when you turn a friend into an acquaintance, they’re still a Facebook Friend. They’ll get everything you post to Friends; they just won’t get the posts you limited with “Friends except Acquaintances.” And your full friends won’t be able to share those posts with your acquaintances, either.

Facebook can help you choose which friends should be acquaintances. Go to the Home page and scroll down the left column, looking for the “Friends” group. You’ll see a list of Friends categories, many of which you probably had no idea you had. Click on Acquaintances.

You’ll get a news feed of posts only from your Acquaintances. On the right, you’ll find a list of Friends that Facebook thinks you might want to demote (Figure 8). If you agree on any of them, click the Add button next to the name. You can hover over a name for more details. You should also click “See All Suggestions” at the bottom of the list.

Conversely, you can also promote Friends to Close Friends. Not surprisingly, there’s no “Friends except Close Friends” on “Who should see this.” But there is an option to post only to Close Friends.

You can promote a friend to a good friend the same way you demote friends to an acquaintance. It’s only a matter of picking the appropriate menu option.

Clicking on the Friends category opens a page where you can create addition lists of friends (Figure 9).

By mastering all of these lists, you can control who sees what. You can easily make sure that your parents — or your kids — won’t read your dirty jokes.

And then there’s Facebook itself

With Facebook, you have to remember whom you’re dealing with. It’s a highly successful, for-profit company that doesn’t charge you a fee.

That doesn’t mean it’s really free. It can collect an astounding amount of your personal information, and it earns its billions of dollars mostly through a special form of advertising. Over time, the service creates a detailed profile of you from what you post and what you read. That data is used for targeting tailored advertising to you.

In short, whenever you use Facebook, you’re giving away a piece of your privacy. Keep that in mind whenever you use it.

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Win10 setup randomly runs the OS-install process

A reader successfully upgraded from Win8 to Win10; but now the Win10 bootup process sometimes reverts all the way back to the “Preparing Windows” upgrade step. Here’s why and how to fix it.

Plus: Why Malwarebytes sometimes blocks Skype, and a reader is deeply suspicious of Win10’s “phone-home” background telemetry.

Win10 setup repeats ‘Preparing Windows’ step

Phyllis McHugh’s new Win10 upgrade is stuck in an erratically repeating loop.

• “I recently upgraded my Windows 8.1 Pro x64 computer to 64-bit Windows 10 Pro. I like the new OS, but I’m having an interesting problem from time to time.

  “Sometimes when I sign in to the system, instead of the usual ‘Welcome’ screen it displays ‘Preparing Windows.’ Then a desktop opens that doesn’t have access to my drives. The only way to get around this problem is to select ‘Restart.’

  “Occasionally, that doesn’t work and I have to completely shut down and start over. Typically, the system then boots correctly into my familiar desktop and I have full access.

  “What would be causing this issue? Is there anything I could do to fix it? It does get annoying.”

The “Preparing Windows” screen should appear only with a fresh installation, major update, or a reinstall of Windows.

If that screen is reappearing repeatedly and erratically during a normal sign-in, something is causing Win10 to forget that it has already completed the full setup process.

There are several possible causes, but here’s the clue that jumps out at me: You say the problem happens at initial sign-in, but resolves with a reboot or restart.

That suggests your hard drive is having trouble reading some critical data sectors. Here’s why:

When you cold-start a PC with a conventional hard drive, the computer and drive are at room temperature. At that relatively cold temperature, the drive’s mechanical parts might not move as quickly, accurately, or smoothly as when it’s been running for a while and fully warmed up. This is especially true with older systems whose hard drives have experienced some wear.

The failed read attempts result in data errors. If the drive’s built-in error-correcting code (ECC; info) can’t compensate for the errors, Windows can’t access the data. If the inaccessible data contains Windows’ setup information, Windows could assume it’s never been fully set up on that PC. It’ll then repeat some or all of the setup process, and you’ll see the “Preparing Windows” screen again.

Once the drive has been working for a while — say, the time it takes for the initial failed boot, followed by a reboot or restart — it reaches normal operating temperature and things work better; the ECC compensates for any remaining read-errors, Windows now knows it’s already been set up, and the system starts normally.

There are other potential causes of these start-up failures, too. But the above fits the described symptoms nearly perfectly.

Whatever the cause, I think the following two- or three-step repair will set things right.

• Step 1: Make a complete backup of your user files. You can use File History or any of the excellent third-party backup tools available (many of which are free). For help with Win10’s tools, see the Top Story, “Best of breed: Win10’s hybrid backup system” (Oct. 15, 2015), which also includes links to some reputable third-party backup software.
• Step 2: Perform corrective maintenance and run system diagnostics on your PC, including tests of your PC’s memory systems (hard drive and RAM). For tips, how-tos, and recommended tools, see the March 1, 2016, LangaList Plus, “Free diagnostic tools solve weird boot problems.”

  Correct any problems your tests uncover and then try using your system normally. If your PC now works as it should, you’re done!

  But if not, try the next step.

• Step 3: Use Win10’s built-in Reset options; they’re there specifically to help correct problems with the OS’s installation, setup, configuration, or file integrity.

  Reset/Keep my files will perform a nondestructive reinstall of Win10. This should rewrite/refresh your entire OS, leaving your files and most of your settings alone, and it should correct the startup problem you’re experiencing (provided that the hardware checked out okay in Step 2).

  Reset/Remove everything is a total fresh start for Windows. All OS files are replaced with new copies, and all settings are rebuilt from scratch. The downside: You’ll have to manually restore your user files from backups, and reinstall all third party software.

  For more information on the pros and cons of each of Win10’s Reset options, see the section labeled “OS, apps, and settings backup and recovery” in the aforementioned Oct. 15, 2015, Top Story.

With healthy hardware and a refreshed Win10 setup, your problems should be solved!

Why is Malwarebytes blocking Skype?

Mary Nelson is justifiably concerned that her Skype setup is flagged as compromised.

• “I keep getting warnings from Malwarebytes when running Skype. It’s been happening for about a week now.

  “Is Malwarebytes being paranoid, or did Microsoft pollute Skype to that point that it’s now considered malware?”

When Malwarebytes scans a peer-to-peer communications tool like Skype, it doesn’t just look at the local software, it also looks at the locations you’re connecting to or receiving connections from.

If the other end of a connection is a location known to host malware, Malwarebytes might flag that connection as a threat.

Note that, in this case, Malwarebytes isn’t blocking Skype per se, but is blocking the connection to one specific, possibly problematic location. You should still be able to Skype to other safe locations.

For more information, including how to remove the block if you’re sure that the Malwarebytes action is a false positive, see the related Malwarebytes support page.

More on Win10’s phone-home telemetry

Reader MP’s email note carried the subject line: “Windows 10’s invasive feature.”

• “I’ve not seen you address this Windows 10 problem. Despite disabling all the available options in the OS, it’ll continue to phone home dozens of times each hour through its telemetry mechanism. It’s enough to make someone leave Windows for Mac.

  “I’d appreciate your coverage of this issue. Microsoft, of course, has an excuse for this; but we’ve heard it before, both from Microsoft and others. It’s a matter of time (if it hasn’t already) before the cyber world’s dark side will take advantage of this.”

Despite what you’ve probably read elsewhere, much of Win10’s data collection is indeed under user control — you can choose to allow or disallow it. My main Win10 system, for example, gives me control over more than 60 separate privacy adjustments. (The exact number of available settings varies from system to system, depending on which apps and hardware you have installed.)

Many of the “Microsoft is spying on you!” reports are derived from the default settings Windows 10 uses when you select the express installation. Or they’re based on the beta versions of Win10, which enforced the mandatory collection of lots of system information so Microsoft could see how people were using the OS and where things went wrong. After all, that’s the whole point of a beta test.

Other reports arise from mistaking benign activities — such as accessing software updates and reporting operating system errors or malfunctions — as something evil.

Still other reports of OS spying simply assume that no phone-home activity is benign — and that’s just silly. Obviously, we willingly and routinely send data to the cloud for activities such as voice search (Siri/Cortana/Google Now, and so forth), browser-page prediction, anti-malware updates, license-checking, and so on.

(In truth, to a greater or lesser degree, most if not all modern operating systems collect data and send it back to Internet-based servers. Consider how much personal information is sent upsteam from the typical smartphone.)

That said, here’s how to take control of most of Win10’s telemetry activity; and how to make an informed judgment about the rest.

• Adjust Win10’s privacy settings. They aren’t secret or hidden or hard to get to. Just click Start/Settings/Privacy. (For a fuller discussion of these settings and how to control them, see the Sept. 10, 2015, LangaList Plus column, “Working through Win10’s many privacy settings.”
• Check out the technical details: The inner workings of Win10’s telemetry are published in the MS TechNet article, “Configure telemetry and other settings in your organization.”
• Examine Microsoft’s privacy-policy documentation: Look up the “Windows 10 and privacy” FAQ and the official Microsoft Privacy Statement page.
• Read third-party evaluations of Win10’s telemetry practices: See, for example, the ZDNet article, “Windows 10 telemetry secrets: Where, when, and why Microsoft collects your data.”

When you’ve read the above, and stepped through the abundant Privacy controls that Win10 offers, I think you’ll agree that most of the “Microsoft is spying on you!” reports are — to put it charitably — based on bad, incomplete, or just plain wrong information.

Feedback welcome: Have a question or comment about this story? Post your thoughts, praise, or constructive criticisms in the WS Columns forum. To rate this or other stories, click over to our polls page.

 

Payment processing for a small business

Lounge member Drewski runs an IT-support service and needs to be able to accept credit cards.

He’s discovered that merchant services through a bank are very expensive and PayPal is not everyone’s cup of tea in Australia — or has even been heard of by many people there.

So he inquired in the General Windows forum for credit-card processing service recommendations and received some, which you might like to know about, too.

The following links are this week’s most interesting Lounge threads, including several new questions for which you might have answers:

Office Applications
General Productivity	Microsoft email clients
Word Processing	Password-protect multiple files at once in Word 2010
Spreadsheets	Code to select ID
Visual Basic for Apps	Problem manipulating listbox list
Microsoft Outlook	How to change Outlook default template?
Other MS Apps	OneDrive: Why do Office documents need Enable Editing?
Windows
General Windows	Recommend credit-card processor?
Windows 10	Windows 10 request to log in again when already logged in
Windows 8	Script problems
Windows 7	Win7 Office Update nonexistent as of 3-16-16
Windows Servers	Help with a PowerShell command
Internet/Connectivity
Internet Explorer and Edge	From IE 11 not launching to IE 9 not working
Application Servers	Path to understanding virtual-server company offerings?
Other Technologies
Security & Scams	Ransomware on wife’s laptop
Maintenance	Okay to have two system backups to one external HDD?
Hardware	How to upgrade computer’s memory?
Graphics/Multimedia	How to convert an EML file to a JPG file?
Other Applications	Recommend PortableApps.com platform?

starred posts: particularly useful

If you’re not already a Lounge member, use the quick registration form to sign up for free. The ability to post comments and take advantage of other Lounge features is available only to registered members.

If you’re already registered, you can jump right into today’s discussions in the Lounge.