The things you share on Facebook
have always been stored on the
site, but it used to take a lot of
patience and determination for someone
to uncover every single post you’ve made
over the years. Now, all that will change
with the Timeline, a scrollable list that
surfaces all kinds of things about you
that you might have forgotten even
exist. Things other people have posted
about you or tagged you in will also
become visible in a whole new way. This
should concern you because it allows
people access to a much more detailed,
granular record of your life—which could
potentially be misused. For example,
while your old photos were always visible,
they’ll now be presented alongside all
your old status updates and conversations
with friends, which is a level of detail
you might not want to have your newest
colleagues at work seeing. You might
even be comfortable with certain friends
having access to that kind of “scrapbook”
of your life, but if their accounts are
ever shared or compromised, there’s no
telling who else might see everything.
Moreover, if there’s anything that might
embarrass you (old party pictures,
offensive statements made in jest), you’d
better start cleaning up right away!
Here’s where your friends lists come
in handy. You can just allow (or disallow)
entire lists at a time, based on how
close you are to each group of people. If
you haven’t already done so, this would
be a great time to start creating (or
at least updating) your friends lists.
Knowing how big this change is,
Facebook will give each user a week to
preview his or her own timeline before it
becomes public. Those who have been
members for longer will of course have
to spend more time rooting through their
new profiles, especially since people were
much less likely to censor themselves
or their posts in the early days, when
privacy wasn’t such a big concern. Make
sure you click every little grey dot running
down the center of the screen; each
one represents a timeline entry that
others might be able to see. Pay special
attention to the boxes that summarize
your activities from each year or month.
The good news is that all your privacy
controls still work. To be doubly sure,
you can preview your timeline to see
how much anyone can actually see.
Click the prominent ‘View As…’ button,
and you’ll be able to make sure.
Simultaneously, Facebook is rolling
out new behaviors for apps, which
might be of even more concern. Now,
apps can automatically post running
accounts of all your activities, without
you necessarily knowing. News sites
can post links each time you read an
article, and music streaming sites can
post the titles of each song you listen to
(these end up in your friends’ scrolling
news tickers). You won’t be asked for
permissions for each individual post,
so make sure you remember that your
activities are being tracked, or you might
end up embarrassed in all new ways.
The key, again, is to make sure you’re on
top of your privacy and security settings.
Make sure you know what each app does
before giving it blanket permissions.
