My friends with a connection to legalese and publishing ... filecontent rather than the writing style. ... would be remiss if I did not give credit where it ... • Members of my group

My friends with a connection to legalese and publishing insist that I start the book with the following to make it clear that I am I and You are You. What a lovely way to start a beautiful relationship. LOL!

Copyright © 2010 | Rakesh Bhambani All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopying, recording, or otherwise. You may not copy any content from this book for posting on a website, blog, forum or any online or offline location without written permission from the author. Warning and Disclaimer: Every effort has been made to make this book as accurate as possible, but no warranty or fitness is implied. The information provided is on an “as is” basis. The author/ publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damages arising from the information contained (or omitted) in this book. No patent liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained herein. Facebook® is a registered Trade Mark of Facebook Inc. and the author of this book is not associated with the company in any official or professional capacity, except as a consumer/ user. About Me You can call me technologically illiterate (I majored in English Literature). By a strange quirk of fate however, my work environment has always been in high tech industries and office buildings with roofs bristling with advanced antennas and communication gizmos. I’ve mostly worn a Customer Service hat at work and been, I think, fairly good at being a bridge between high tech products and services on one end and a befuddled average Joe, end-user at the other. I am an Internet Marketing consultant. A Certified Google Advertising Professional, I work with small to medium size businesses to promote their web initiatives. If you or a friend needs a hand with a website and to market online, feel free to drop me a line at [email protected].

June 2010 © www.FacebookDemystified.com Page 2

mailto:[email protected]

This Version of Facebook Demystified was updated on June 2, 2010

You can find further updates at www.FacebookDemystified.com/downloads If you are reading a borrowed copy of this book, perhaps you would consider purchasing your own copy at www.FacebookDemystified.com which will ensure that you get direct access to fresh updates directly. Facebook changes all the time and any book about the subject is guaranteed to be out of date within a few weeks. You would also help me support my favorite charity www.cry.org which is bringing micro-miracles to the lives of underprivileged children. For any support or question regarding this book please drop me an email at [email protected] I’ll appreciate your feedback about this book and your ideas and suggestions for future updates at [email protected] Please continue to post your Facebook related questions at www.facebook.com/skillfoo Thank you, Rakesh aka Skillfoo [email protected] Breaking News – Facebook have changed their Privacy Settings on May 25th 2010. They say that the changes will be seen by all users within a week. If you still have the old settings, a few of the links and diagrams in the book may not be exactly the same as what you see on your Facebook. Please be patient and wait a day or two till you get your new setup from Facebook. It will happen automatically and you’ll know you have them when you see the following notice on your Facebook Home Page.


http://www.facebookdemystified.com/downloads

http://www.facebookdemystified.com/

http://www.cry.org/



http://www.facebook.com/skillfoo


Welcome to my first attempt at writing a book. “Hey mom look, I’m an author”. I don’t profess to be a professional writer so I hope you will be forgiving if some things are not as they should be. I have focused more on the actual content rather than the writing style. It is however very important that things are explained clearly so if there is anything you do not understand, or find confusing, please do let me know. This book is a living document and will constantly grow and change with the readers’ feedback. You will of course be entitled to free updates in the coming months. This project has been the largest chunk of my life the last few weeks so I would be remiss if I did not give credit where it’s due . . . A word of thanks and gratitude to some very special people

• Members of my group Skillfoo who have always showered me with love and kindness. It’s been extremely motivating. I love you guys.

• Skillfoo members like David Sedgwick, Donna, Birgit, Nancy,

Thubten, Tandy, Lori, Kristi, Tammy, Jane, Roberta, Gill and Miriam and so many others who I first met on Skillfoo and are now cherished friends.

• All my Facebook friends who have given me so much joy, laughter

and a second alternate life.

• Jeetesh and Mohan Lashkari, my friends and business associates from Jaipur. This project could not have happened without their support.

• My web designer Bharat Mal. I appreciate his patience with all the

changes and my middle-of-the-night brainwaves.

• Hartej, my copy-editor, for cleaning up after me.

• My cousin Neeru for constantly challenging me to push the envelope.

• My mom and Sandhya. The best mom and sis in the world, no

arguments. I’m a mad genius (obviously more mad than genius) and their love and support has been unquestioning.


One of my biggest challenges with this book has been to try and determine what to include, and what not to. Should it be a comprehensive user manual . . . or something much easier to refer to, and containing info that is not generally known or adequately covered in Facebook Help? I chose the latter approach. The book is divided into these main sections-

1. Safety and Security (advanced users may like to skip this but I HAD

to make this the first section for those readers who are not fully

familiar with the perils of life online)

2. Privacy (what others see about you)

3. Important Facebook Settings that people often miss or

misunderstand

4. The Facebook Experience (Tips and Tricks to make things easier,

faster, better or just plain possible)

Tip — One of the advantages of an electronic book is that you can use the Find function to find and instantly jump to a particular word. Press Ctrl and F (Cmd and F on a Mac), type in the word you want to search for and press Enter. Press Enter again for the next instance of the word.

Tip — I hope the size of this text is comfortable enough for you to read. If you wish to enlarge or reduce it, you can do that by clicking on the Fit to Page Width button on top of this page, or changing the magnification.


Table of Contents Safety and Security

— Passwords How to create a strong yet memorable password

7 8

— Phishing (Anti-virus software or having a Mac doesn’t protect you) 10 — Nasty Links and how to recognize them 11 — Virus Protection 15

Privacy

— My opinion and some recommendations 17 — Difference between your Wall (Profile) and your Home Page (Feeds) 19 — Your Profile Page

How to go invisible

19 Blocking/ Unblocking people 20 How others see your profile 21

— Your Photo Albums 21 — Your “Recent Activity” 22 — Private Status Messages & Posts (The Lock icon) 23 — Friends of Friends . . . aren’t necessarily friends 25 — Instant Personalization 26 — Community Pages 27

Facebook Settings — List Management You MUST do this 29 — Keeping your stuff away from the wrong eyes

Friends List (even from friends)

30 Photo Albums 31 Contact Information 33 Your Wall 34 Other friends’ posts on your wall 35 Groups you are a member of 35

— Stop some people from commenting on your posts 35 — Controlling notifications (alerts and email) 36 — Customizing your Profile/ Wall 39 — Hiding and unhiding friends, pages and Apps 40 — Blocking and Unblocking Apps 42 General Tips and Tricks — Backup your Friends List 43 — See new friends and those who have unfriended you 44 — Free Birthday gifts that stand out from the others 45 — Birthday List – Who did you miss wishing yesterday? 47 Endnotes 50


Safety and Security Passwords A simple search for “strong password” on Google reveals many ways to create an unbreakable password but at the same time it might make life very tough for you if you follow it to the letter. One needs to sign in to many websites and if you took their advice too seriously you would end up with passwords that look like gT3&3$#Hhtx$#8 and you’ll need a different one for each website. Just doesn’t work for me. I think one should take a balanced approach. Here’s a background to my thought process. There are three categories of people who are most likely to hack you.

1. Absolute strangers who do not know you Most hackers are weirdoes who do it for thrills and the ‘control’ they feel they get over others. For them it’s just a prank but they do manage to give one a very nasty shock if they are successful. Some others attack random and easy targets for financial or identity theft. Currently the popular method they follow (and one that often works for them) is Phishing (more about that in next section). A reasonably strong password would defeat them otherwise.

2. Known people at home, work or friend circle.

These are most often more of casual snoops than thieves. This category of people is more likely to hack you if they stumble across your password or if your password is very easy to find or guess.

3. People on Social Networking sites like Facebook, whether or not

connected to you. This is a new category of beast. Newcomers to sites like Facebook, or those not too tech savvy, are sometimes easy targets for scoundrels who look for ‘suitable’ targets at random. Phishing again is the most popular form of attack here.

The point I’m trying to make here is that unless you are a celebrity, or a rich or soft target, a reasonably safe and easy to manage password is more than adequate. No need to put 3 padlocks on Fido’s bowl of feed because experts say that one lock is unsecure. Phishing is how you are most likely to get hacked, not by getting your password cracked.


Here are the rules I follow to create my own passwords. The Dos —

• Make sure that the password is at least 10 characters long

• Make sure it has letters, capital letters, numbers and symbols in it

• Make sure you don’t type in your passwords in sight of someone who you would not share your password with, which means practically everyone.

• Make sure there are no surveillance cameras that can focus on your

keyboard while at work or in a public Wi-Fi zone.

• Change your key passwords often. At least once in two months. This includes your primary email, Facebook and finance related e.g. Paypal and online banking/ credit cards.

The DON’Ts —

• Don’t make your stored or written down passwords too easy to find

— Don’t jot them on a Post-It, your phonebook or your notepad. If you are storing them on your computer, don’t put them in a file called Passwords or put them in a file that is not password protected itself.

• Never store them on your mobile phone. You could lose more than

your phone if it gets stolen or lost.

• Avoid the name of your spouse, kids or pet. Don't use birth dates, phone numbers, and addresses and so on. In short any info that is known to people you know, or publicly.

My primary email account has the strongest password. As long as I have control over it, I can control/ recover other passwords. My banking and other critical accounts also have strong but easy to remember passwords. Creating a Strong but easy to remember password Example — I create a 4-6 random non dictionary word e.g. vota I take the 2nd to 4th letters of the website I am on, in capital letters. e.g. on hotmail.com it becomes OTM


I take some 3-5 numbers that mean something to me but are not known to anyone (unlike my car number or date of birth) e.g. 1985 (a year that is important to me but not for something anyone would know) I add a symbol e.g. # I string all of them together to get votaOTM1985# which is very strong. It looks like complete gibberish but still easy to remember. And you can have a different one for each website while essentially having to remember just the rule you used and the initial random letters. It has worked well for me over the years. Now that you understand the logic, I’m sure you can make your own rule set and create some lovely original gibberish. It’s much easier to do than it sounds I promise. For most other websites, I let my Mozilla Firefox browser remember my passwords since it lets me protect all of them with a strong password. It’s a pretty safe and practical system but I still don’t store my critical passwords there. Never store your passwords in Internet Explorer (IE) and other browsers though. If your computer gets stolen, a baby could dig out your passwords from there. I haven’t used IE for many years and there is a chance that my information may be out of date. If you know that I’m wrong please drop me a correction at [email protected] and I will make the changes in the next update.

PS — There is an excellent 3rd party password manager for IE and other browsers available called Roboform. It’s free to try but you’ll need to buy the Pro version if you wish to use it for more than 10 sites. www.roboform.com

But ALWAYS remember, the strongest of passwords pops like a soap bubble if you let anyone steal it from you.

• Never store passwords where they can be seen or stolen

• Don’t get phished



http://www.roboform.com/

Phishing — Plain English definition of Phishing — It’s when a fraudulent website (looking like a trusted site) attempts to fool you into providing it with your username, password or other critical info like Credit Card number etc. Example — You could be led to a web page that looks exactly like the login page of Facebook, but it’s actually a fake site, and you unsuspectingly type in your username/ password, not realizing that you are providing it to a thief.

Phishing is the most prevalent way of hacking currently. It has become increasingly sophisticated and sometime hard to detect. I know of few people who have never been phished at least once. Here are some essentials you need to know to protect yourself. Phishing attacks mostly come as Link in a message, email or a post. Places like Facebook are particularly dangerous because the message or post seems to have come from a known friend or trusted source, which makes the receiving person let down their guard. Very Important — You have to remember that phishing attacks attempt to fool you into providing your vital credentials voluntarily. It’s not a virus or a nasty piece of software lurking on your computer. So don’t always count on your Anti Virus to protect you from getting phished, though they often do. The best defense is knowledge and common sense.


A note for Mac owners — You are significantly safer from Viruses and Malware than those of us who use Windows based systems but you are as vulnerable to phishing as anyone else. So please don’t get complacent.

Sometimes while browsing you will see a pop-up message “you have been logged out of Facebook (or another website)” and must log in again. It will either give you a link to click and log in or open the login page for you. Now though this happens legitimately on many sites (especially if you did not click in the window for a few minutes), the first warning sign is that if you were actively browsing, you shouldn’t have seen this message at all. To be on the safe side, you should close that browser window and open a new one to start again by either typing out www.facebook.com or by clicking on its favorite/ bookmarked link in your browser. Another popular method of attack is sending you an email, supposedly from Facebook or your bank, saying that your account will be shut down or something to that effect, unless you reset your password. Such a mail is almost never ever legitimate. The biggest warning sign is that the mail almost never has any information about you or your account that is not publicly available. In some cases it might have your name, but mostly it will just start with a plain Hi or Hello. Junk the mail immediately. If it has an attachment, DO NOT click on it out of curiosity. If you want to be sure or if it pertains to an important account like your bank account etc. call them up by phone to make sure. Nasty Links and how to recognize them You must also understand the difference between a legitimate link and a misleading one. Here’s a sample link, let’s dissect it. http://www.lite.facebook.com/something.else So how do we determine is if it is a legitimate Facebook link or not? Carefully look at how the dots divide the URL (link). The dots are very important and not to be confused with the dash (hyphen) or the slash sign. Ignore the http:// part (including the slashes). It’s not important for our identification and could even be missing in the link. Not important.


http://www.facebook.com/

http://www.lite.facebook.com/something.else

Neither is the www. Ignore it. What we want to see is the word or phrase between the last two dots before the first slash? That is the actual website name. So in the case of http://www.lite.facebook.com/something.else the word between the last two dots (before the first slash) is facebook. It’s followed by com. Bingo! It’s legitimate. Let’s check another one. This is important so let’s make sure we get it right. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZhnWyk&feature=related Same rule . . . the word between the last two dots, before the first slash, is youtube. Followed by .com. Legitimate again. Have a look at the following links I’ve made up to see if you can spot the bad ones.

1. http://new.music.yahoo.com/videos/--2451197

2. http://www.important.facebook.com/antivirus

3. www.official-facebook.com

4. www.FACEB00K.com

5. http://www.youtube.rockstarvid.com/youtube/watch_videos

6. www.ebay.in How many bad ones did you spot out of the six?

1. http://new.music.yahoo.com/videos/--2451197 The word between the last 2 dots is yahoo. It’s legit. Yahoo has many other suffixes other than .com so yahoo.co.uk would be legit too.

2. http://www.important.facebook.com/antivirus

It’s facebook. Legit again.

3. www.official-facebook.com

It’s official-facebook, a nice official sounding name but not legit if


http://www.lite.facebook.com/something.else

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZhnWyk&feature=related

http://new.music.yahoo.com/videos/--2451197

http://www.important.facebook.com/antivirus

http://www.official-facebook.com/

http://www.faceb00k.com/

http://www.youtube.rockstarvid.com/youtube/watch_videos

http://www.ebay.in/

http://new.music.yahoo.com/videos/--2451197

http://www.important.facebook.com/antivirus

http://www.official-facebook.com/

Facebook.com was the site you were looking for. Please note the difference between a dot and a hyphen. The site official.facebook.com is legit but official-facebook.com is not the actual facebook site.

4. www.FACEB00K.com

This would fool many. The letters O have been replaced by zeros so it’s actually www.faceb00k.com. See?

5. http://www.youtube.rockstarvid.com/youtube/videos

It goes to a site rockstarvid and not youtube as they would like the unwary to think. This link is made up by me as an example with no intent to malign the real site rockstarvid.com if it exists.

6. www.ebay.in

Legit. There are numerous suffixes (TLDs as the geeks call them) other than .com or .net. Dot IN is the suffix for India the same way .co.uk is for the wonderful wet li’l island west of Europe or .com.au is for Australia.

You might have noticed from my explanation in bullet #6 above that there are some suffixes like com.au, net.au, co.uk, co.in that have a dot between the suffix. Therefore you will need to look at the word before the co, com or net etc. to determine the real site name. I hope I could manage to explain that clearly. Once we have understood how links are structured we also need to understand that links can be cloaked our masked. Have a look at the link below. www.facebook.com Looks legit doesn’t it? Now take your mouse cursor over it, don’t click on it however. Do you see my point? The link displays facebook.com but actually leads to a website called fakewebsite.com. I just made up this example but in real life it could easily be a phishing site or a site that installs nasty stuff on your PC.


http://www.faceb00k.com/

http://www.youtube.rockstarvid.com/youtube/videos

http://www.ebay.in/

http://www.fakewebsite.com/

Here’s the quickest way of checking the real link. Take your mouse over the link but don’t click on it yet. You will see the real link in the status bar (lower left corner of your screen) like in the screenshot below.

Click on it only if you determine that the link looks ok. Also make a habit of looking at the website address in the URL bar. Especially on a website that is asking you for a password. I always do that.

Please be aware that a clever Phisher/ hacker can cloak both the status bar link and the one in the URL bar too. Fortunately that’s very rare as most hackers are sloppy and lazy. At the end of the day it’s your common sense that will protect you and I hope the information I have provided above will be helpful. There is another popular method of stealing passwords similar to Phishing. In this form of attack a website does not falsely pretend to be a


known and trusted site, but actually they use their own website to offer you some service that requires you to give them your passwords. Example — Recently a website offered to check for you to see who has blocked you on MSN messenger and ‘obviously’ they need your MSN user ID and password. It was a nice looking professionally designed website that fooled many people. One of my friends put her MSN username and password in their form and she was locked out of her Facebook account too since her MSN mail was the credentialing email for Facebook and anyone with access to her email could change the passwords of both her email and Facebook. Moral of the story — Never give your passwords of one site to another one unless you trust it implicitly. I mention the last bit because there are many legitimate websites that need access to your account with another site.

Advice — Always avoid Apps and websites that offer you to show “who has viewed your profile” or “find out who has blocked you”. Currently that’s the most popular “story” of most Phishing websites.

Example — If I want to import my Yahoo contacts to Gmail, Gmail will need my Yahoo access details. I will then need to ask myself if I can trust Gmail (Google) with my password or not. BTW, the answer is yes in this case. ☺ Anti-Virus Software and Best Practices In my personal opinion, there is no single “best” Anti-Virus program so feel free to go with any of the top names. Kaspersky, Norton, AVG, McAfee are just some of the names that come to mind. If you are looking for a free solution, head over to http://free.avg.com/in-en/homepage to download the free version of AVG. I used it for many years without managing to get infected, and I have to sometimes visit very dodgy sites while researching. Installing an Anti-Virus is just step one. You have to also make sure that the settings in it fetch updates automatically. New viruses are growing like . . . um . . . viruses, and it’s critical that your Anti-Virus is updated regularly to recognize the latest mutations.


http://free.avg.com/in-en/homepage

http://free.avg.com/in-en/homepage

Never accept the offer of an unknown company you found on a Search Engine that offers a free scan of your system and asks you to install software. Example — You hear of a nasty virus called koobface doing the rounds. You decide to research it and fire up Google. You then come across a website that gives you info about koobface and very nicely offers you a free scan. When the scan is run the sirens go off and everything starts to beep. Yes, it seems that you have koobface and maybe a few other assorted viruses. You are then offered free software that guarantees to remove them. You stop mopping your forehead and hit Download. Ta Da! You are NOW the proud owner of a brand new virus. The software you just downloaded is actually malware and could be a virus, a password stealer or something quite as nasty. Moral of the story — While installing software, stick with known brands or software that has been recommended by a credible source.


Privacy My opinion and some recommendations We all came to Facebook to enjoy ourselves, right? It’s wonderful to reconnect with old friends and discover some new ones and you cannot really be social AND private at the same time, can you? Fortunately the answer is yes, mostly you can. First, it’s VITAL that you understand why privacy is important, and why an “I have nothing to hide” mindset could potentially hurt you, or a loved one, financially, emotionally, socially or career wise. The potential risks are so high that the difference between Safety and Privacy begins to blur. There are a lot of serpents in the Garden of Eden we have here, real nasty people. Hackers, spammers, scammers, Identity thieves, burglars, sexual predators, pedophiles, stalkers and some just-evil-for-evil’s sake nasty scum. Just like in real life. What makes environments like Facebook particularly vulnerable is that most people don’t understand the risks, or how to protect themselves. They veer from one extreme of not caring at all, to the other extreme of either going into an unsocial private black hole where they hide away ALL their info or just close down their Facebook accounts in fear. Just like in real life, the answer lies in finding a happy medium. Go out, have fun, but DO understand the risks and how to manage the risks. Hopefully this book will give you new insights about -

(a) A common sense approach to Privacy and recognizing the risk areas

(b) Discovering the Settings that give you control over your privacy When I was growing up and we used to ask our neighbors to collect our newspapers while we were away on vacation so that we would not come to the attention of roving burglars or their informants. In the modern Facebook era we gleefully announce the dates of our upcoming vacations, oblivious to the knowledge whether it is visible not only to Friends, which is bad enough, but also to absolute strangers who may be happier than we are about our vacation. Last year I read about a case where an Insurance company refused to settle and pay in a case where the claimant was supposed to be in pain but had posted photos of her frolicking on the beach, with privacy set to Everyone. Fail!


I also read about another case where a divorce settlement went all wrong because of a photo of a new expensive villa was visible to an ex-spouse. So many of us have an ex-spouse, ex-friend, ex-partner or ex-anything in our lives who should really not be privy to the details of our current activity. Some of us are in politics and have enough enemies we don’t want to provide ammo to. Some are teachers who have to be ultra careful about their social networking activity. Employers, prospective and current, often snoop on employee’s Facebook Walls if they are visible.

Obviously this guy is not going to endear himself to current or prospective employers if his wall is visible to everyone with a permanent record of idiocity. I hope you have begun to understand the importance of privacy. Have fun, enjoy Facebook but please DO practice safe Facebook. Restrict visibility of your family photo albums to known friends and family only. These albums often have photos of young children and teens and we often not only name the kids in the photos but also, horror of horrors, tag them if they have a Facebook account. We sometimes have our street address displayed in our Contact info. We should never ever do that. We want that what happens in Facebook should remain in Facebook. Having your home address there is asking for trouble big time. I also choose to hide my email, Instant Messenger ID and phone/ mobile number. I choose to hide my year of birth too. An Identity thief could try figure it out from my year of Graduation but why hand it to him on a plate? There are countless other examples like this and I can’t even begin to list them out for you. My advice to you is to apply common sense and your experience from real life to your life on Facebook.


On my part I will try to give you an easy explanation of all important Settings, especially those related to Privacy. Difference between your Wall (Profile) and your Home Page (Feeds) There are still a lot of people confused about the distinction between the Wall (or profile) and the Home Page (the Most Recent and the Top Stories feeds. It’s also sometimes called the Stream). The Home Page is the page where you first land up when you sign in to Facebook. It initially displays the Top Stories section, where you will see your friends and your posts/ comments that Facebook deems would be of interest to you. It’s also not sorted chronologically (latest post first) but in the order of importance (as deemed by Facebook). You can click on Most Recent to see the latest posts by you, and your friends. You must remember that your Home Page is your unique view, visible only to you. It’s like you are looking out from your window at your Facebook community and the activities happening there. Since it’s YOUR own view, we don’t need to be concerned about your privacy there. Your Profile Page (or your Wall) is the opposite, it’s the view where your community is looking inward through the same window, to the activity happening specifically involving you. Your posts, posts made by your Friends on your wall, posts where you were tagged etc. Your Profile There are 4 categories of people who can see you and information about you on Facebook. Your friends, friends of your friends, non-friends, and other people not even on Facebook. Let’s have a quick review of the various settings and how we can control what each category of people can see or not see. Your name, profile photo, gender and the Fan Pages you are a member, are deemed public information and anyone who can see you on Facebook or a Search Engine like Google will be able to see. How to go Invisible — You can block yourself from being listed in Search Engines by unchecking the “Public Search Results” box at http://www.facebook.com/privacy and click on the Edit your settings link under Applications and Websites at the bottom left.


http://www.facebook.com/privacy

Then click on Edit Settings for Public Search at the bottom of the page. If you uncheck the box, your profile will not be visible to anyone searching for you on a Search Engine like Google. This will take a few days to take effect though, once Search Engines review the Facebook site. They do so after every few days. You can also choose to be not visible to non-friends if they search for your name within Facebook. To do that, go to the Privacy page at http://www.facebook.com/privacy. Click on View settings at the top of the page under Basic Directory Information. Click on the button for Search for me on Facebook and select Friends Only. So will you really be invisible? No. Anyone searching for you will not be able to find you but you will still be visible to non-friends in Fan Pages, Groups and Friend’s walls. You can be visible by activity if you commented, Liked or posted something or you can be visible simply by being in the list of friends of someone or list of members of a group. This should not be alarming though. Facebook has 500 million members and the chances of running across someone you wanted to avoid are negligible. Also, in today’s ‘connected’ world, you are probably visible in phone books and on the Internet in many places anyway. So how can one be almost totally invisible? One way is to block specific people. Typically this is people who have made a nuisance of themselves on Facebook in the past and also people you know from real life like ex-spouses, ex-friends, ex-partners or any other pests. Blocking/ Unblocking People There is only one way to do that. You have to know the Facebook user you wish to avoid any interaction with. Locate their profile, go to their wall and at the bottom of the left column, you’ll see an option “Report/ Block this person”. Click on Block. Once you block someone, they will not be able to see you and vice versa too. You will not be able to see each other. They will not be notified that you have blocked them. This is not total though.



There are a few places where you might have mutual visibility, especially to past activity and older posts. The complete list is at — http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=15657 If you want to see the list of people you have blocked, or perhaps to unblock them, you can do so at http://www.facebook.com/privacy and click on Edit your lists at the bottom of the page under Block Lists. Looking at your profile the way others see it — Go to the Privacy page at http://www.facebook.com/privacy. Click on View settings at the top of the page under Basic Directory Information and click on the Preview My Profile button at the top right of the page. The page that opens shows you your profile as seen by non-friends. Is there something you don’t want strangers to see? Is your phone number, email ID, the wall tab or Photos etc. visible? If yes, I’ve covered how you can hide that in the Settings section later. You can also preview your profile as it looks to a friend. You can change many settings on your profile so that different friends can see different things so it’s sometimes important to make sure that something you don’t want a particular friend or group of friends (examples — Coworkers, family or neighbors) is not visible to them. To do that, click through to the Preview My Profile page again (as described above) and type in the name of a friend in the “Preview how your profile appears to a specific person:” window.

Caution — You can preview your profile as a particular friend sees it and you can also view how a non-friend sees it, but you cannot preview how a friend of a friend sees it so be very careful while changing your settings about the things you allow Friends of Friends to see.

Photo Album Privacy I’ll cover how to change your settings for privacy in the Settings section but want to give you a quick overview of your privacy options here in the Privacy section. Except for your profile photo, which everyone can see, you have near total control over who can see your photos. You can display some albums to Everyone, Friends of Friends, all friends, some friends, just some individual or only yourself.


http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=15657



There is one loophole however. If any of your friends who is allowed to see an album tags a photo of you, and the person he tagged is not even a friend of yours, the other person will be able to see that photo he was tagged in and even further tag any of his friends. They can even comment on the photo depending on your settings for “comments on posts”. Facebook runs one of the largest and most complex computer systems in the world and there are bound to be failures occasionally. For example recently users email IDs, even if set to be hidden, were displayed for some time. They fixed it quickly in a matter of minutes but the incident highlights the fact that you should not rely on Facebook settings, or your own ability to understand and implement them. Never upload a photo or any other content to Facebook that would be embarrassing to you or your friends/ family if it was seen by people it was not intended to be seen by. There are plenty of other photo sharing sites out there on the internet. Your “Recent Activity” Almost all your activity . . . Posts on friend’s walls, Comments, Likes, Joined is now visible to your friends and there is no setting to stop this. Your activity is posted to your wall and the live feed of all, or certain friends. Many people have asked me about this on the Skillfoo page about how this works and who will see this. It works this way- Any of your friends who have access to the wall on which you posted will be able to see the activity in their feeds. That means that if you posted on a Fan Page (which is visible to everybody) or on a Friends wall whose privacy settings are set to either Everybody or Friends of Friends (which means all your friends), then in that case, all your friends will be able to see your post or comment in their feeds and on your wall. Example — I posted a Happy Birthday message on Tina and Russell’s page. Tina has set her wall privacy set to Only Friends, and Russell has it set on Friends of Friends. So my post on Tina’s wall went to the feed of only mutual friends and it was visible only to them, and to me of course, on my wall. The same post on Russell’s wall however went to the feed of all my friends and is visible to all of them on my wall too. So the weird thing here is that you don’t have the settings to control who sees your activity, but it’s actually the settings of the friend on whose wall you commented on, that determines which one of YOUR friends sees YOUR activity. Funny huh? So how do you know whose feed displayed the activity?


http://www.facebook.com/skillfoo

Preview your own Wall as a friend sees it, as explained above, and all the posts/ comments that show up in Recent Activity, would have also shown up on this friend’s Feed. You can delete any post or activity from your wall by clicking on the word Remove that appears when you take your mouse cursor over the post. This used to remove the post from the feed too but this has changed or is probably changing. Example — I posted a comment on a friend’s photo and deleted it from the “Recent Activity” on my wall. It disappeared from the Most Recent feed of my friends but not from the Top News Feed that they saw. Another example - I saw my cousin had added 7 friends in my Most Recent feed. I called him up and requested him to delete just one of them. As soon as he did so, the complete post of “xxx has added yyy and 6 other friends” disappeared from my feed even though he had only deleted one of the 7 posts off his wall. I’ll continue to observe and test and let you know in future updates. In the meantime I would suggest that you assume that deleting a post from your wall does not delete it from your friends’ feeds. Private Status Messages and Posts (The Lock icon) This is one of the better changes made in December 2009. It’s pretty cool, and secure too. The “What’s on your mind” box where you post status updates or post Photos/ Videos/ Events and Links is called the Publisher. I’m sure you have noticed the Lock Icon there, or even used it.


When you post a Status Update or post a photo or link, you can override the standard privacy settings of your wall for that particular post. Example — You could post a Status Update or a Photo that will be visible (or invisible) to whomsoever you choose. Here’s how it works — Click on the Lock Icon and then click on Custom.

You can now choose who you wish to see, or not see, your post. You can choose categories of people, like Friends from window A in the diagram, or individuals or Lists (more about Lists later) in window B. The people you don’t want to see the post can be put in window C. If you Check box D, all your future posts will use this setting till you change it. Here’s some useful things you could use this feature for —

1. You have a post you don’t want Coworkers and/or family to see 2. You have a post you don’t want your Game Friends to see 3. You have a game related post you want only your game friends to

see 4. You have a post you only want a set of close friends to see

You have all these options with the Lock privacy option. The post will not be visible to any other person but the people you selected. Not in feed, not on your wall, not in Recent Activity nor in your Wall Photos album if it was a Photo. It will also be only visible to the


people you chose. This includes the new Community Pages mess created by Facebook in late April 2010. I like this. Important — If a friend is on two lists, and you have to set contradictory rules for them, the more private option you select takes priority and will take effect, which again is pretty cool. Example — You post a photo album from an office event and set privacy of the album to be visible to your Coworkers List only. You also set it to be not visible to your boss, even though he is also in the Coworkers List.

Your album will not be visible to your boss because the more private setting kicks in. Friends of Friends I have been active on Facebook for about a year and a half. It’s been magical here, I can’t think of a better word for it. On Facebook I’ve rediscovered some old school and college friends, from a time much before the Internet or even home computers. This could not have been possible without Facebook. Thank you SO much Facebook.

BUT Facebook itself, and so many other users, do not realize that Facebook usage, etiquette and culture have evolved in the last few months. A very high percentage of people are more than happy to accept a friend invitation or send one themselves to someone they don’t know. I do it all the time myself when I see interesting comments or faces in the groups I am active in. When I joined Facebook, I kind of ran amok and added


about 1500 so called friends, mainly from the many “Add Friends” groups out there. The good thing was that I ran across about 200–300 wonderful people, some of who are now better friends than many ‘real’ friends I have in my offline life. I have no regret but the bad news is that the vast majority were useless adds. Many of them had no common interest with me and so many were plain weird and a lot were fake IDs. A lot of my friends are like me too. They are happy to add strangers in the hope of discovering a rare find. My take on this — There are a lot of strangers floating around in the Friends and “Friends of Friends” category. Even if you are cautious yourself, I think that the chances are pretty high that you have some friends who are not. Hence my advice — While setting your privacy options in the next section, do not choose “Friends of Friends” for any category, that’s as good (or bad) as saying “show this to everyone”. Instant Personalization Introduced in late April 2010, this has created perhaps the biggest outcry against Facebook policies than ever before. How it works — At the time of writing there are 3 websites in the program. Microsoft’s docs.com, pandora.com (not available to users outside the US anyway), and yelp.com. There are tens of thousands websites out there using “Facebook Connect” that allow you to log in with your Facebook ID. The difference with these three is that you are automatically logged in whether you choose to, or not. Your name, gender, profile photo, current city, network and any information you have made open to everyone is liable to be used to personalize your experience, and your friends’, when you visit the site. Apparently your Friends List is also shared even though it’s information that you can now hide from Everyone. Example – I went to the CNN website, which is a Facebook Connect website, and not even an Instant Personalization partner, and straight off it showed me a friend’s activity on that page. In addition to the “public” information, Applications and these websites can also access your information that you allow friends to share with third party websites and Apps. You can view and control that info at Go to the


Privacy page at http://www.facebook.com/privacy. Click on Edit your settings on bottom left under Applications and Websites. Edit the settings for Info accessible through your friends.

Do remember that this page only controls what your friends can share (mostly automatically and unknowingly) with the Apps they join. I personally think that Instant Personalization is a good thing and the wave of the future. For example if I go to yelp.com and look for a restaurant, I’d love it if I could see what my friends have to say about it. If I decide to write a review, I’d want my community to see it too. BUT . . . I’m still VERY unhappy with the way it has been forced on us and we have to opt-out, rather than opt-in, from each site that’s in the program. I therefore dislike it even though I would have liked it otherwise. To Opt-Out of Instant Personalization go to the Privacy page at http://www.facebook.com/privacy. Click on Edit your settings at the bottom left of the page under Applications and Websites. Click on Instant Personalization settings and uncheck the box there.




Community Pages Whenever anyone makes a post on Facebook which contains a generic keyword, it is also posted to its relevant (Ha!) Community Page on Facebook. Example — You post something like “Ironing . . . gardening . . . fbooking . . . cooking . . . ♥ Laughing . . . at my toes ! Time to paint my toenails :)” it will also be posted on the wall of the Cooking page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cooking/113970468613229?v=stream . . . and the Gardening page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gardening/105975426100728?v=stream . . . and the Toenails page (Sheesh) http://www.facebook.com/pages/Toenails/105781089449534?v=stream But here’s the thing, only the people authorized to view the post on your wall will be able to see it so it’s not an area of concern from a privacy perspective as long as your post privacy settings are tight. It just adds a few thousand dumb junk pages to the billions of pages already out there. Not one of Facebook’s brighter ideas.


http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cooking/113970468613229?v=stream

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gardening/105975426100728?v=stream

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gardening/105975426100728?v=stream

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Toenails/105781089449534?v=stream

Facebook Settings List Management Do you keep missing the status messages, photos of favorite friends because your home page is cluttered with posts from less important connections? In 5 short minutes you can now fix that forever. One of the cool features of Facebook which few people use is the ability to categorize you friends into different groups, or Lists as they are called. Example — In my account I have Favorites (my favorite band of buddies), Family, School Friends, Coworkers, Clients (includes my boss), and Gaming Friends. Categorizing your Facebook connections like this has two powerful benefits, not only does it allow different kinds of friends a different view of your Facebook profile and postings (how they see you), but it also allows you control over what YOU want to see on your home page. Example – Your Boss, your Game Friends, your family and your mates could each have an entirely different view of your wall and see only what you choose to let them see. This is powerful stuff. To start creating lists go to Account> Edit Friends and click on Friends in the left column. Click on the “Create New List” button.


Type the name of the list (Example – Coworkers) in Box A. Select friends to add to the Favorites list by either typing their names in Box B or selecting them from the list (the list is sorted alphabetically by first name). If you click on a friend, the box turns blue to show it’s selected and if you click again, it’s deselected. You can see the total number of friends selected in the list right above the box. If you want to review just the people you have selected, click on the “Selected” tab next to “All”. Click on “Create List” once done. You can then go on to create the other Lists. Remember that people can be on more than one list. (Example — If Karen is a coworker and she is also a good personal friend, she would be in both the coworkers list and the Buddies list. To edit a list later, click on Account on the top right of every Facebook screen. Click on Edit Friends. You will see the names of all your Lists in the left column. Click on a list name, and then on the “Edit List” Button. The friends in the highlighted blue boxes are the ones who are in the list. Just click on the ones you want to delete or add. Remember to save the list once done. Keeping your stuff away from the wrong eyes Hide your Friends List Go to the Privacy page at http://www.facebook.com/privacy. Click on View settings at the top of the page under Basic Directory Information. Change the settings button for See my friend list, as the red arrow shows in the diagram below.

You can now once again choose to share your Friends List with Everyone (how I hate that idea), Friends of Friends (ugh!), Only Friends, or you can customize who can see it.



In Customize, you now have the option to set it at Only Me so that no one but you can see it. Another good option is to allow School Friends to see it, so they can find common friends from school to connect with. If you have created a Game Friends list, I strongly suggest you hide your Friends List from them.

Remember – You could possibly show your Friend List to a particular list (Example – School Friends) but they would see your complete Friend List, not just other school friends.

Please also make sure that you have unchecked the Public Search Results box as described previously. It wouldn’t make sense to hide your Friends List from some or all Facebook friends yet it is visible to people searching in Google. These are just opinions and ideas to get you thinking about the options that are available. You should of course choose the settings that work best for you.

When you add a new friend, only the people who can see your Friends List will be able to see “. . . is now friends with…” in their feeds and on your wall.

Photo Albums You can choose the privacy level of each photo album you have separately. The settings apply to the whole album with the exception of Wall Photos where you can set privacy levels for individual photos. Here’s how to review and change Privacy Settings for your existing albums. Click on Account > Privacy Settings > Customize settings > Edit album privacy. You will now see a list of all your Photo Albums with the option to review and change settings for each of them on the right. You can choose to show a particular album or hide it from Lists or individuals. You also have the option to set it to Only Me if you want to close an album but don’t want to lose the comments.


You can also set Privacy for your Profile album. Your Profile Photo is visible to everyone (except blocked individuals), but if you block the album to Only Friends and someone who is not a friend opens your profile page, they will see your profile photo but they will not be able to click on it to see the other photos in your profile album or even the full size profile photo in the album. You can also set Privacy Levels for Albums at the time you are creating them. Go to your Profile > Click on the Photos tab > Click on the Create a Photo Album button. You will see the option to set your Privacy Levels here before you publish the Album. Another way to post a single photo without going to your albums is by clicking on the Photo Icon in the publisher box on your wall.

When you post a photo on your wall using the Publisher using the Icon A, and setting Privacy using the Lock Icon (B), the photo is published to your Wall Photos Album and each photo in the album can have its own privacy level as you set it unlike other albums where privacy is for the whole album and not individual photos. You can also choose to show your Photos to certain people yet not allow them to Comment on them. You can discover how to do that in the “Stop some people from commenting on your posts” section below.


Contact Information — Go to the Privacy page at http://www.facebook.com/privacy. Click on Customize settings. Change privacy settings of your contact info in the 3rd section.

This one is pretty simple. All you need to remember is that if you want to change any info, you have to go to your Profile > Info Tab. You can control what to display from there, and who to display it to from this page. As always, I recommend that you should be very careful about what you choose to display to either Everyone or Friends of Friends. I would personally never display my email, phone or address to strangers unless my profile was primarily created to promote my business. An interesting thing to note is that almost all settings on this page allow you very tight privacy settings where you can hide info like your Mobile Phone number even from friends but the settings for “Add me as a friend” are less flexible and the only choices are Everyone and Friends of Friends. This means that you can’t stop invites altogether. In the “Send me a message” settings, the most private option is Only Friends so you can’t stop some or all friends from sending you messages. I would have preferred a customization option where one could block all or at least some friends who tend to send a flood of cutesy messages or irrelevant events in other cities or even marketing mail. I somehow hate the idea of reporting or unfriending them which seems too harsh to me. Your Wall You can select who can see the Wall tab on your profile, and thus your wall. You can also bar certain friends or Lists from seeing it. Go to the Privacy page at http://www.facebook.com/privacy. Click on Customize settings.




The name of this setting often confuses people. You have to change the settings for “Posts by Me” to control visibility of your entire wall. Example — If you use Custom setting to set it to Only Friends except Game Friends like I have, only your Friends (except your Game Friends) will be able to see your wall. Your Game Friends and everyone who is not a friend will not even see the wall tab when they reach your profile page.

Factoid — Your Status Messages and Wall Posts (on your own wall) will not go to the feeds of your friends who are barred from seeing your wall.

Hiding Other Friends’ posts on your Wall You can hide your Friends’ posts on your wall from some or all friends.

Customize the settings for Can see Wall posts by friends to control who can see posts by other friends on your wall. Friends barred from seeing other friends’ posts will however still see posts by other friends in which you have been tagged.


Groups you are a member of All the Groups you are a member of are displayed on the info tab of your profile unless you change the settings for that. The settings for that can be found on the Applications Setting page. Click on Account > Applications Settings > Groups - Edit Settings If it says “Info Section: Available (add)” it’s fine. Your Groups are not visible on your Info tab, but if it says “Info Section:Added (remove)” click on Remove. Change Privacy to Only Me using custom settings, or whatever you prefer. That will control who sees the Groups tab or box on your profile. Stop some people from commenting on your posts You also have the option to prevent some people from Commenting or Liking your Posts, even if you choose to let them see your wall, or if they see it in their feeds. Go to the Privacy page at http://www.facebook.com/privacy. Click on Customize settings.

The people who you allow to Comment will see your posts like this . . .



And the people you have not allowed to comment will see the same post like this . . .

This setting will apply not just to your Status messages but all posts made by you, including Photos, Albums and Videos etc. and also regardless of where they see it, on your profile or their feeds. The strange thing is that you can allow a certain set of friends to comment on posts on your wall (or alternatively, bar a certain List like Game Friends) yet the choice for Friends can post on my wall is either All or None. Controlling notifications (alerts and email) There are two types of notifications you receive. One is for Friend Requests, Facebook Messages and general Notifications in the Facebook Bar on top of all Facebook pages.

Please note that the number against each alert will disappear as soon as you click on an alert, even if you do not take any action on it. Example — In the Alerts you see above, once I click on the Friend Request Icon, I will be able to see the pending invitations I have received and either accept or ignore them. If I choose to do neither, they will remain pending.


You can choose the general notifications you wish to be alerted about on the notifications page at http://www.facebook.com/notifications.php You can go to that page by clicking on the Notifications link in the Facebook bar and then clicking on “See All Notifications” You can control which options you wish to be alerted about by checking/ unchecking the boxes in the right column.

You may see fewer or more options. The visible options are only of the kind of notifications that you have received in the last 4 days. Feed Comments — When someone has commented on your post, or a post you commented on or Liked. Friends — If a Friend Invitation you sent was accepted. Likes — If someone Likes a post you made. Links — If someone comments after you on a Link you commented on or Liked. Notes — If someone comments after you on a Note you commented on, Liked or were tagged in. Photos — If someone comments after you on a Photo you commented on, Liked or were tagged in. Video — If someone comments after you on a Video you commented on, Liked or were tagged in. Also for notifications that the video you posted has finished processing.


http://www.facebook.com/notifications.php

Email and SMS Notifications — Click on http://www.facebook.com/editaccount.php?notifications or else navigate to Account > Account Settings > Notifications Tab.

Pretty self-explanatory. But don’t miss the last section that lets you control which Apps can send you emails. Very Important — It’s easy to overlook the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page. Do click on that to save your changes.


http://www.facebook.com/editaccount.php?notifications

Customizing your Profile/ Wall There’s a secret setting that not many people have discovered yet. Facebook likes to play Easter Egg Hunt perhaps. Go to your Wall and click on Options below the Share button.

The word Options will change to Settings.

Click on Settings.

You can use Imported Stories to automatically post a Link on Facebook to your posts on other sites/ your Blog.


The Auto Expand Comments box is checked by default. If you uncheck it, the posts on your wall will not show Comments and Likes by default. It gives your Wall a less cluttered look. One can click on View Feedback to see the comments and Likes for any posts. If you uncheck the Combine Posts box, Your Wall will only display your posts (and Friend’s posts in which you have been tagged) when a friend clicks through to your Wall. Friends will then have to click on the link at top of your page to see posts by your other friends too. Hiding and Unhiding friends or Apps

Here’s how to hide a particularly noisy friend, or an Application you are not interested in, from our Home Page/ feed. To do that, move your mouse over a post on your Home Page that you would not like to see again. A Hide button will appear to the right of that post.

Once you click on Hide you will get the option to hide either your Friend’s future posts, or either the App’s (if the message was generated using an App), from your Home Page. Your Friend will still be connected to you and would not come to know that their posts are hidden from you. They can still post directly on your wall unless you have separately barred them from seeing it or commenting there. If you hid someone by mistake, you may click on the Edit Options link that appears in place of the post you just hid. If you want to unhide someone later on, go to your Home Page, make sure you are in Top News and not Most Recent. Scroll down to the last post and click on Edit Options there. You will see a box like this.


There will be up to 3 tabs in this box . . . Pages, Applications and Friends. You don’t see them in my diagram because I have not hidden any Friends or Pages from my feeds. The lists are alphabetical. Find the ones you wish to hide and click on the “Add to News Feed” button to unhide them. Blocking Apps Facebook has now made blocking Apps much easier. Go to the Privacy page at http://www.facebook.com/privacy. Click on Edit your settings on bottom left under Applications and Websites.



If you Turn Off all Apps (also called Platform) you'll be disconnected from all applications and Facebook connected websites. That means friends won't be able to use them to interact with you, and information and settings you've saved may be permanently deleted. I can’t imagine using Facebook without using some Apps at least but ultimately it is your choice and you can turn off all Apps with one click now if you so choose. If you decide to keep some please have a look at the Info accessible through your friends section. I think you would like to uncheck most or all the boxes there. You might also feel the meed to Block some Apps. Blocking Apps If you are Blocking some Apps (as opposed to merely removing them), make sure that those Apps have no undesirable posts on your Wall else once you remove the Apps, they will be invisible to you yet their posts will remain on your wall, visible to your friends, yet not to you. To Block an Application, click on the App’s name in the post you see it in. It’s typically in the same line where you see the Comment and Like links.

Once you are on the App’s Page you will see the link to Block in the left column. To unblock an App, go to http://www.facebook.com/privacy and click on Edit your lists under Block Lists.



General Tips and Tricks Backup your Friends List Backing up your Friends List periodically is very important. By doing that you will be able to quickly find and connect with your friends if your Facebook account gets disabled. Think that’s improbable? I think I am an asset to the Facebook community yet my account got deactivated recently and at the time of writing this, I’m still waiting to get it back. I hope someone from Facebook reads this and intervenes. You can also compare your backup lists made at two different dates to check for people who are no longer in your friends list since the last time you made a backup. Here’s how you make a backup list. Go to www.facebook.com/friends or else navigate to Account > Edit Friends Click on Friends in the left column. Then click on Create a New List.

Take your mouse over the last name in the list. You will see that the box turns light blue when you do that. Do not click yet. Take the mouse just a tiny bit to the right of the box, stop moving immediately once the box has turned white again. We want to be just slightly outside the box in the last name.


http://www.facebook.com/friends

Now press the mouse button and keep it pressed. Bring it to just over the end of the last letter of the name. Move it around slowly till the text is fully highlighted in blue. Once it is, release the mouse button. You’ll notice that all the names above are also highlighted in blue.

Press CTRL and C (CMD and C for Macs) to copy the names. Open Notepad or any text processor you have and paste the list there by pressing CTRL and V (CMD and V on Mac). If you are using MS Word or a different word processing software that has rich text, make sure you “Paste as unformatted text”. In MS Word you will find it in Edit > Paste Special. Save your file as “Facebook Friends backup as on <DATE>” That’s it. Just remember that this list also includes your Fan Pages. See new friends and those who have unfriended you To see who has unfriended you or new friends you have added since the last backup, just compare the two lists. It’s fairly easy if you have a short list. The names are ordered alphabetically. Just remember that someone might have changed their name so don’t panic if you see a name missing at first glance. I did that when I first compared two lists.


If you have MS Word and Excel, it’s very easy to compare two lists, which is neat if you have a huge list of Friends and Pages.

1. Copy the list from Facebook (as explained above) 2. Paste Special (unformatted text) to MS Word 3. Press CTRL and H (opens the Find and Replace box) 4. In the “Find what” box type ^p followed by exactly 6 spaces 5. In the “Replace with” box type a space, then a dash/ minus sign,

and then another space 6. Click on Replace All Steps 4 to 6 above move the Network name of your friends from the next line to the same line as the name is on. 7. In the “Find what” box, first delete everything that is there and type

4 spaces followed by an asterisk (*) and then one space. 8. Delete everything from the “Replace with” box. 9. Click on Replace All

This will give you a much cleaner looking list. Save the file and make sure you save in text format. It will give you a warning or two that you will lose formatting . . . ignore that. Please make sure you follow these steps precisely each time you make a backup. Download the Excel file “Compare Two Lists” from the members download area at www.facebookdemystified.com/downloads Now all you have to do to compare two lists is to paste them in the two columns in the Excel file and instantly it will highlight the changes so you can check out a huge list in a few seconds. Unfortunately this is not as elegant a solution as I would have liked and I have an idea for a much easier/ faster solution but that would cost a fair amount of money. Maybe I’ll try to do that if I manage to sell this book well. I’ll then be able to take off more time from my job to devote to Skillfoo. Let’s see how it goes. Fingers, eyes and legs crossed. ☺ Free Birthday Gifts that stand out from the others Birthday Greetings are a great way to pick up threads with your friends on Facebook, strengthen relationships with clients/ coworkers and a great way to get the conversation ball rolling with people you met on Facebook randomly.


http://www.facebookdemystified.com/downloads

The only obvious options currently are to either post the little pink cake which Facebook Gifts offers currently for free. That’s so boring though and everyone seems to be posting the same. You could buy a gift from the Facebook gift shop but somehow I never liked the value proposition of that. Here are a few ideas you could try. Your greeting will stand out and they cost nothing. 1. Post a picture —

Go to www.google.com and click on Images. Search for something like flower bouquet/ birthday cake/ birthday gift/ birthday present/ birthday wishes/ birthday greetings or something similar. Click on the picture you like on the Google page. Make sure the picture is not on a corporate website or copyright protected. Click on the image on the top left.

Once the image opens, right-click on it and then click on “Save picture as” or “save image as” (depending on your web browser) to save the image to your computer. I suggest that you make a separate folder for this called Gifts or something like that. You can then use your personal library of gifts again and again. To post this picture on a Friend’s wall first go to their Facebook page. Write your message in the “Write something” box then click on the Photos icon in the Publisher box.


http://www.google.com/

Click on Share. That’s it. See how your gift stands out from all others? Click on the photo and also tag the birthday baby for good measure. That will ensure that your message is visible in the “Photos of” album of your friend for a far longer time after your message has scrolled off their wall.

2. Post a Video —

Go to www.youtube.com or your favorite video sharing site. Search for something like Happy Birthday/ Birthday Greetings/ Funny Birthday Message or something similar. Find the video you like. Copy the URL and post it as a Link (not video) on your Friend’s wall.

There is a downside to this thing however. Most often the good videos you find will have inappropriate or irrelevant text messages or the title of the video will be less than appropriate. But there are still plenty of great videos out there. Example - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dePMU8R131s You could also copy the video from YouTube to your computer (there are plenty of browser Add-ons that let you do that) and upload it to your friend’s wall (as a Video, not Link, this time). You can then tag your friend too. The hardest part to doing this is finding a video that is copyright free. Images are much easier to find than videos. Birthday List — Who did you miss wishing yesterday? I take my Birthday Greetings activity seriously but often I can’t login to Facebook and then have to miss out on the ritual. Facebook shows you upcoming Birthdays in the coming days and weeks (by clicking on Events, and then Birthdays, on the Home page) but we often would like to see the ones we missed a day or two before. An easy way to do that is not apparent.


http://www.youtube.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dePMU8R131s

There are two ways you could organize this better.

1. Subscribe to Facebook’s weekly digest of Birthday Alerts. You could then simply refer to the last mail to check any Birthdays you missed. Go to Accounts > Account Settings > Notifications and put a check mark in the box for “Has a birthday coming up (weekly email)”

2. If you have not subscribed to the digest, there is another way you can quickly go to past Birthdays.

Take the total number of Friends you have on Facebook and divide that number by 23. Round off the answer to the next integer. Example —I have 1582 friends. 1582/23 = 68.7826087. Rounding it off gives me 69. Copy this URL and paste it in your web browser’s URL bar. http://www.facebook.com/?sk=bd&s=BBB Replace the BBB at the end with your number from above. e.g. 69 so it looks like this — http://www.facebook.com/?sk=bd&s=69 Press ENTER to open this URL. If you see a message like this, reduce the number by one (e.g. 68 from the example above) and try again. Repeat till you see the correct list.


If you didn’t see the error above, and the Birthday you see are older than you want, just click on the Next (right arrow) button at the bottom of the page.

I wish Facebook would clean up the way they have programmed this. It would have been so much simpler if we could just have had a Back button in the original Birthday List that we see in Events.


Endnotes — How did you like my first stab at writing a book? I’m as jittery as a first time expectant father. My friends who have seen the manuscript love it but then again . . . they’d love anything I do (bless their kind hearts). Did YOU like it? Anything else I should have included? Was it simple enough or over simplified? I have given freely of my personal opinion in a few places, is it appropriate in a reference book or should I put a sock in it? Please, please, please do share your honest criticism (and testimonials, if any) with me at [email protected]. Your feedback will help me make this the VERY BEST resource about Facebook. You will of course be entitled to free updates as promised. I’m totally committed to enhancing your privacy, safety and fun on Facebook. If you wish to encourage me onwards, please copy the link below and share it as a Link on your Facebook. http://www.facebookdemystified.com To do that, go to your Profile Page and click on the Links button.

Then paste the link http://www.facebookdemystified.com in the box that says http://



Select Everyone by clicking on the little Lock. Click on Attach and then Share. That’s it. Congratulations! You just gave me a big publicly visible thump on the back. Thank you very much. See you in my next update. I can already think of some more info I will need to add, and of course Facebook will be changing all the time. Rakesh aka Skillfoo [email protected] PS – Want to gift Facebook Demystified to a friend? Please drop me a mail at [email protected] and let me know how many copies you would like with the names and email IDs of the recipients. I’ll then send you an invoice and set up their accounts manually. Thank you. FBDSKILLFOO




Documents

My friends with a connection to legalese and publishing ... filecontent rather than the writing style. ... would be remiss if I did not give credit where it ... • Members of my group