I Want to Stay Privately Connected on Facebook…But Mousing Over My Name Won’t Do It

UPDATE (May 17, 2013): This iteration of the hoax is may be using “Graph app” (I’m assuming they mean Graph Search) as the reason to make these changes – or it may be more generic and simply say “recent changes to Facebook”. The “author” has also added a warning to the post by adding “I will have to delete you” if you don’t follow the instructions. In actuality, the only thing that following the posts’ instructions will do is keep you from seeing your friends’ comments, likes, life events, and photos – NOT the public. See below for instructions on how to truly keep these things private.

Raise your hand if you’ve seen (or posted) the following Facebook status update recently:

I want to stay privately connected with certain FB friends. However, with the recent changes in FB, the “public” can now see activities on ANY wall. This happens when our friend hits “like” or “comment” ~ automatically, their friends would see our posts too. Unfortunately, we cannot change this setting by ourselves because Facebook has configured it this way….So I’m asking for your help. Only you can do this for me.

PLEASE place your mouse over my name above (DO NOT CLICK), a window will appear, now move the mouse on “FRIENDS” (also without clicking), then down to “Settings”, click here and a list will appear. REMOVE the CHECK on “COMMENTS & LIKE” and also “PHOTOS” by clicking on each one. By doing this, my activity amongst my friends and family will no longer become public.

Thank you very much for doing this. Now, copy and paste this on your wall.

Once I see this posted on your page I will do the same for you.

Don’t feel badly. You’re not alone…many people have been lulled into a false sense of privacy by sharing this post. Slightly different versions of this post circulate every few months. I first saw it in January 2012.
 The problem with hoaxes like this is that they lull Facebook users into a false sense of security. Following the directions in the above post (or a similar one) DOES NOTHING TO PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY. All it does is keep you from seeing your friends’ likes and comments. You may as well just unfriend them.

If you’re concerned about your privacy while on Facebook (and aren’t we all!), YOU have the power to control who sees what you post by adjusting your Privacy Settings, not by unsubscribing to friends likes and comments.

The best way to protect your privacy on Facebook is to set all of your privacy settings to “Friends Only”.  Just by opening up your settings to “Friends of Friends”, could make your activities visible to thousands of people (150,000 according to this article from Facecrooks).

It’s Up to You: Check Those Facebook Privacy Settings

If you’re concerned about people you don’t know seeing your posts, comments, likes, etc. simply change your Privacy settings. This is easily done:

1. Click on the lock icon at the top of your news feed
2. Click ‘Who can see my stuff?’
3. Click ‘Friends’
NOW your activities can only be seen by friends!

You can also set the audience of each individual post from the status update box:

As you can see, you truly do have a lot of control over who sees what you post on Facebook. I also hope this post will serve to convince people to double-check information before re-posting on Facebook. If we all take a minute or two to do some research (i.e. Google) before re-posting we will all be better informed and our news feeds won’t be cluttered by what is essentially spam. Remember, sharing these hoaxes doesn’t help anyone and can, in fact keep people from being safe by giving them a false sense of security which, in my estimation, is precisely what the scammers want.

SEE ALSO: Facebook Privacy Settings: A Complete Walk Through

If you run across these types of posts and would like to know if they are hoaxes or legitimate, please feel free to contact me here on the site, on my Facebook Page, or via Twitter or LinkedIn. I’m always happy to answer any questions about social media, including privacy and security issues. Part of my job as a social media strategist is to stay abreast of hoaxes, scams, and current security measures – among other things – and when I see these things making the rounds on Facebook, I post about them on my Facebook Page and here on the blog.

Have other questions? Please feel free to leave a comment below or, better yet, join my community on Facebook so that you can stay updated.