5 Facebook privacy changes by the privacy dinosaur

5 Facebook privacy changes by the privacy dinosaur

Facebook’s recent privacy changes are designed to make your account easier to manage with the assistance of the privacy dinosaur.

Facebook hasn’t done much in the form of changes to its logos or branding, they also don’t have very many cute little characters to work into their user interfaces. I’d imagine that if there was one place in their user experience that a cute little blue dinosaur could help it would be in their typically over complicated privacy settings. He doesn’t have an official name, but folks are calling him either “Zuckasaurus”, “safeasaur” or  “privasaurus.” Whatever you call him Facebook hopes that he will add some much-needed friendliness to their privacy settings.

1. Mobile sharing settings

One of the big gripes about sharing settings on Facebook mobile app is that you need to remember to select who you are sharing with. With the redesigned mobile sharing features they have placed the share settings on the top of the screen. This is in the style of an email app so you can specify which audience you want to have the post be viewed by.

2. Default settings for new users

Facebook usually sets the privacy settings to public when you first join Facebook. Now Facebook will change this default setting from Public to Friends in hope of gaining new users trust in the system. Interestingly enough Facebook will also alert new users to choose an audience for their first post. If they neglect to make a choice the setting is defaulted to Friends. You’ll be able to change your audience at any time for future posts.

3. Anonymous login

5 Facebook privacy changes by the privacy dinosaur

CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced at Facebook’s F8 developer conference earlier this month, that Facebook Login, the button that allows websites third party apps to use Facebook login credentials, will support something called anonymous login. It’s interesting how this will work, Anonymous login will let you log into an app so you don’t have to remember usernames and passwords, but it wont share personal information with the app.

4. Privacy checkup tool

5 Facebook privacy changes by the privacy dinosaur

Back in April Facebook users began seeing previously mentioned “privasaurus” cute little dinosaur this is a multi-step privacy wizard of sorts called “Privacy Checkup”. This week Facebook will be rolling out this tool allowing it’s users to make more informed decisions on what things they should share, who has access to what data and what apps are accessing this data already.

5. Public posting reminder

5 Facebook privacy changes by the privacy dinosaur

Facebook’s privacy dinosaur will remind you when you’re about to share publicly, hopefully this will stop you from sharing something you meant for just your friends with the public.

Facebook stated in a recent blog post “While some people want to post to everyone, others have told us that they are more comfortable sharing with a smaller group, like just their friends” and “We recognize that it is much worse for someone to accidentally share with everyone when they actually meant to share just with friends, compared with the reverse.” What are your thoughts on these upcoming changes?

Author information

Jason Tucker

Web Developer at Tucker Pro

Jason Tucker is a web developer, systems administrator and a father of three. Jason owns Tucker.Pro a web development company and is host of WPwatercooler a weekly WordPress web development and design YouTube channel and podcast. Jason also blogs over at WPMedia.Pro where he talks about working with audio and video on the web.

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