If You Link Your Facebook Profile Data to Pages, then You Make that Information Public by Default
Facebook’s new user profile Pages transition tool includes an obvious and yet not obvious way that users might make personal information more publicly available.
The company is launching a set of new Pages designed for non-commercial purposes today, and as part of that it is asking users to convert elements of static data on their Profile into links to Pages. This includes Pages for profile categories like Current City, Home Town, Activities, Interests, and Things I Like. The transition tool is designed to help users pick out the right Pages for their profiles. It comes with options to only do individual Pages if the user prefer. There’s also a way to “snooze,” but no way to opt out completely from going through the tool.
Meanwhile, all Pages are by default public. If you “like” one (or formerly “become a fan” of one), then everyone can see this information by default. This means that if you previously set these areas to somehow be private, the transition tool that Facebook has for you to add Pages will automatically reset these areas to be “Everyone.” If you don’t want those items to be visible to the public, you need to go back in and set them back to the stricter privacy settings you prefer. However, it is still possible for anyone see any Pages that you added through other means, for example by manually looking through all the fans of a Page.
This point seems obvious, because the Pages are by default public. If you “Like” your home town, people who look at the Page of your home town can still see you even if you decided to hide that information and show it to only your direct friends on Facebook. This is how Pages have worked already.
What might confuse some users, though, is the fact that they already had their privacy settings restrict this personal information. They may not realize that the transition tool just moved their settings to the Page default instead of what they had manually chosen. Facebook, for its part, seems to be trying to remind users of the ramifications, because the pages of the transition tool includes the words “Remember, your Pages are public.”
April 20th, 2010 at 6:44 am
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from Marie Seese
April 21st, 2010 at 8:13 pm
[...] If You Link Your Facebook Profile Data to Pages, then You Make that Information Public by Default – Facebook’s new user profile Pages transition tool includes an obvious and yet not obvious way that users might make personal information more publicly available. (via @nealwiser) blog comments powered by Disqus var disqus_url = 'http://www.newmediaphiladelphia.com/bookmarks-for-april-21st-3/ '; var disqus_container_id = 'disqus_thread'; var facebookXdReceiverPath = 'http://www.newmediaphiladelphia.com/wp-content/plugins/disqus-comment-system/xd_receiver.htm'; var DsqLocal = { 'trackbacks': [ ], 'trackback_url': 'http://www.newmediaphiladelphia.com/bookmarks-for-april-21st-3/trackback/' }; (function() { var dsq = document.createElement('script'); dsq.type = 'text/javascript'; dsq.async = true; dsq.src = "http://newmediaphiladelphia.disqus.com/disqus.js?v=2.0&slug=bookmarks_for_april_21st_06&pname=wordpress&pver=2.33"; (document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(dsq); })(); [...]
April 23rd, 2010 at 5:51 am
Anyone one know how I can undo this? accidentally clicked ok, and now I cannot figure this out…Please help!
April 26th, 2010 at 9:26 pm
i am too… please help me get it back to how it was -__-
April 28th, 2010 at 5:53 am
I am having the same problem. I was in the process of trying to tighten up my privacy settings when all of a sudden it had me link the info on my profile (hometown, etc.) to pages. I told them not to do it – and my page was blank! So I sucked it up and re-instated the information… as pages. I want it to go back to the old way. Any one know how to do this?
April 28th, 2010 at 5:23 pm
Same issue with me, I go to my profile page, get a strange alert an apparently hit the wrong link & am now forced into a profile I don’t want with all sorts of links to pages I didn’t approve & my pic showing up on all these pages as “Like”ing these pages that I did not & do not endorse. If I click “unlike” that bit of text get’s dropped from my profile.
Apparently there’s no way that I’ve found to back out of this change without deleting the text from my profile. This sucks.
April 29th, 2010 at 3:44 pm
If you are super particular about your profile like I am, clicking link all meant you just F*d yourself. Don’t mind trying out a new feature like that but at least be able to undo, and not delete data. Wow this sucks.
April 30th, 2010 at 8:35 am
How do you undo it?!
May 2nd, 2010 at 11:58 am
Pleeease I also need a way to undo the Linking and bring it back to how it was??
Doe anybody know how to handle this????
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:39 am
crap… same problem here.
May 4th, 2010 at 1:05 pm
Facebook hates us.
May 4th, 2010 at 3:26 pm
Same Problem. If this is not resolved, the majority of my friends and I have decided we are going to no longer be members of Facebook. And just so FB knows, I have been a member for about 5 years!!!
May 7th, 2010 at 10:28 am
[...] gets…ugly? My biggest problems with this whole “liking” and “linking” FB profiles to pages are: First, those boxes by all the interests, organizations, employers and schools make the page look [...]
May 9th, 2010 at 5:16 am
What a stupid change–I don’t want any of this extra crap cluttering up my page, yet when I declined to permit any of their links they removed nearly all of the personal things on my page that made it interesting to friends. There is no way to get it back that I can find. It’s as if they said, “Let’s punish people who don’t go along with the new changes”.
Idiots!
May 11th, 2010 at 6:42 am
Where can i find that “Link all to my profile” settings …please help
July 13th, 2010 at 4:43 am
Agree – facebook sucks on this point… I have no choice but to delete all my interests. How dumb is that!
August 8th, 2010 at 10:35 pm
ALRIGHT HERE GOES: So U f**ked up ur page on facebook by taking their stupid advice and clicking that awful button, don’t feel too bad, if u ever decided to update ur info u would have been forced to do it at that time anyway, so it was pretty much eventual. One way to go around this stupid facebook feature is to FIRST write down all of ur likes, interests, activities, etc. ALL info because u are about to click edit and delete ALL of those items, everything, including ‘like’ pages. I know it sux but facebook hates us. U can even write down ur ‘like’ pages if u want to get them back. THIS IS NOT AN UNDO THIS IS JUST A WAY TO BEAT THE SYSTEM: After erasing all of ur info U can use ur BIO to add ur activities, interests, music, books, etc pretty much anything because the bio is unaffected by the stupid feature. For example in ur BIO section:
Activities:
BlahBlahBlah
Interests:
BlahBlahBlah
Music:
Ditto
Books:
OK U get the point.
I know it sux but like I said facebook hates us.
You can stretch ur page as far lengthwise as u want. When done, it should resemble ur old facebook page except the writing is now black instead of blue. Hope it helps, this is more for the extremely particular facebooker, this is a temporary solution until facebook realizes how stupid they are.
October 17th, 2010 at 8:42 am
[...] your name, profile picture, friends list, city, gender and fan pages. Additionally, after the transition tool is completed, your profile will also default to publicly sharing your city, hometown, education, likes and [...]
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