Disable Facebook Places
My last post outlined how to turn off the most privacy invading feature of Facebook Places – the ability of friends to check you into places. I like to have this function turned off because now only the places I want to share will be shared. It’s just creepy that someone else can check you into a location.
But it appears that many people aren’t satisfied with just turning off the third party check in function and want to turn Places off altogether. I don’t get it. I’d rather have it on (and unused) in case some day I change my mind and want to use it. If I don’t want people to know where I am I simply won’t check in. But, as with most social networking services, there’s no right or wrong way to use Facebook and it’s features.
It turns out that you can’t turn off the ability to check in. But you can change it’s settings so that it doesn’t notify anyone (except yourself) when you have checked in somewhere.
There are a total of 4 settings to change to minimize the impact of Places. The instructions are as follows:
- Go to your Facebook Privacy Settings.
- Click the ‘Customize settings’ link that appears after your settings.
- Scroll down to the ‘Things I share’ section of the page.
- Click the drop down menu next to ‘Places I check in to’.
- Click ‘Customize’.
- In the ‘Make this visible to’ section of the ensuing popup select ‘Only Me’ from the ‘These people’ drop down menu.
- Click the ‘Save Setting’ menu.
- Back in the ‘Privacy Settings – Customer Settings’ page uncheck the ‘Enable’ checkbox next to ‘Include me in “People Here Now” after I check in.’
- Scroll down to the ‘Things others share’ section of the page.
- Select ‘Disabled’ from the drop down menu next to the ‘Friends can check me in to Places’ item.
- Go back to the Privacy Settings page by clicking on the ‘Back to Privacy’ button on the top right of the page.
- Click the ‘Edit your settings’ link under the ‘Applications and Websites’ heading on the bottom of the page.
- Click the ‘Edit Settings’ button next to the ‘Info accessible through your friends’ heading.
- Uncheck the checkbox next to ‘Places I check in to’.
- Click the ‘Save Changes’ button.
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