Relationship status: aargh!

On Facebook, there's a place where you can fill in profile information such as your relationship status.

By default, any change in the relationship status is relayed on the News Feed so everyone else is alerted to it. A friend was once surprised they hadn't heard about a change in relationship status because he "didn't see it appear on Facebook". This is because alerts had been turned off!

It's kind of sad that people think they can only find out about big upheavals in people's personal lives through the Facebook feeds. In a sad and recent case, which is not Facebook's fault, a man was sentenced to life after murdering his wife when she changed her status to 'single'. The man has been dubbed the 'Facebook killer', but I'm not keen on how the media portrays it as all Facebook's fault -- clearly, other dynamics were at work; the man was on drugs at the time, he was bitter, he had made threatening phone calls.

But you know, it's best to make sure those status updates aren't relayed to all and sundry (find it under Privacy > News Feed and Wall. Uncheck that box!). And if you don't get along with your ex, delete them from your friends list for goodness sake!

When your boss is your Facebook friend... SICKIE WOO!

So. You're sick. Sick of work, that is. And you don't want to come in. So, what do you do? You call your boss and say, "I can't come in this morning. I'm unwell."

In the old days, your boss would sigh and say, "I hope you feel better soon."

But these days, your boss doesn't feel sympathy. They know how to prove you were lying. It doesn't involve hiring a private investigator and having someone follow you to make sure you don't leave the house.

All they have to do is log on to Facebook. Now, this particular story may turn out to be urban legend, as the alleged e-mail exchange is denied by boss and culprit... but the story goes like this:

Kyle Doyle chucked a sickie, as they say in Australia, and on his Facebook status update were the immortal words,

Kyle Doyle is not going to work, fuck it i'm still trashed. SICKIE WOO!

When Kyle refused to give his boss a medical certificate, saying it was unnecessary, his boss then pasted the status update into an email as 'proof' of the deception.




True or not, the email illustrates rule number one: your current boss should never be your friend on Facebook. That's what LinkedIn is for. Rule number two you can work out for yourself...

Source: http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=651937

Facebook photo privacy settings

Strangers are just friends you haven't met (but who've met you).

Facebook photos are all the rage. Practically every day, I see someone who's posted a photo of themselves or their friends. And when I go out with my camera, my friends are always scared I'll post a picture of them on Facebook. This does happen, but I'll always honor takedown requests.

What happens when you post a photo on Facebook is that you can choose to have the photo visible by either:

• Friends (say you have 100 friends, then all 100 friends can see your album)
  
• Friends of friends (if your 100 friends have 90 friends each, then 9,000 people could potentially see your album)
  
• Everyone on Facebook (if your profile is public to your network, say, then anyone in that network can click through to your profile and your albums)
  

Click 'Customize' and you will also be able to specify further restrictions including:

• Some Friends (if you only have a couple of people you want to see your photos)
• Except these people (if you want everyone except your boss to see your photos)

Example: If you tag your friend Jim in a photograph and you've allowed Friends of Friends to see it, then when Jim's friend Pete gets a notification that Jim's been tagged in a photo, Pete can click through to the photo Jim's been tagged in.

But that's not all! Pete can now browse through your entire album even if Jim isn't in any more photos. In the past week I've seen plenty of albums belonging to people I don't know. Random babies, honeymoons to Uluru in Australia, Singaporean weddings, decadent parties with 19 year old girls posing seductively to the camera... and so on. And I have no idea who these people are.

So when you create your album you need to think of the parameters you're applying to the entire album, not the individual photos. Flickr allows you to edit privacy settings for each photo, but for Facebook you need to do it for each album.