How to turn off Facebook Places
As a followup to this morning’s article on Facebook’s new Places feature, I decided to give a more visual instruction on how to turn Places off on Facebook.
First, go to your Privacy Settings which will give you an overview o. Click on the “Customize Settings” link, shown below in red.
You’ll see three settings for Places. Two of them are inside the first “Things I Share” group. By default, “Places I check in” is set to be “Friends Only”. This should be good enough for most people, but if you want to make it even more private, click on “Customize” and only allow yourself to see your check-ins by selecting “Only Me” from the drop-down menu.
The last option is in the “Things others share” group. The option “Friends can check me into Places” should be set to “Disabled”. The reason being is that when you turn this on, your friends can check you in somewhere, even if you’re not there.
While Places may seem like a good idea to some, others may not want to use its features. Couple that with the inability to prevent others from tagging you without your permission, makes Places’ default privacy settings weak.
Category: Social Media, Technology
