Geo-location and Klout

Do you use Klout?

Here’s information from their Privacy Policy regarding geo-location:

“Geo-location Data.

Klout receives location information from the Social Media Services (as defined below) that you enable within the Service and also (with your permission) from your mobile device (“Geo-location Data”). We use Geo-location Data to complete your Klout profile (for example, to indicate that you are located in San Francisco), customize the Service to make it more relevant to you (for example, to show you influential topics in your area) and to offer you location-relevant Perks (as defined below).”

Wonder what this means?

You’re not alone.  Geo-location is used by all sorts of mobile applications.  Essentially, it takes the location information collected by your smartphone and shares it with the application.  (You can go into “Settings” on your phone and change who you allow it to share location data with.)

The interesting thing about Klout, however, is that it doesn’t directly acquire your location info.  It pulls your location from other applications that have it.  Remember that if you don’t want the world to know where you are, adjust your smartphone settings so that you are not sharing that info!

Thanks for reading,

Gail Eddy

Filtering your Facebook messages in G-mail

Plenty of people have asked me what I do with all the messages I receive from Facebook every day.

Doesn’t your inbox get flooded with all of those messages?  Mine sure does!  How do I fix that?

I filter those messages into a separate folder and rarely even look at them.  Here’s how you do it:

First, click on the message and then, from the drop-down “More” button, select “Filter messages like these.

Next, you’ll see the search screen.  Click on “Create filter with this search”:

Finally, to create the filter, click on “skip the inbox”, “Apply the label – Facebook”, and “Also apply to matching conversations”.  Then click on “Create Filter” and you’re done!

Comment below and let me know how this works for you.

Should your “tweener” use YouTube?

This is a discussion you should be ready for when your kids bring it up.  At some point, probably between fifth and seventh grade, your child will ask if they can set up their own YouTube account.  Perhaps some of their friends already have an account and are posting silly videos.  Remember that you don’t need to have a YouTube account just to view video’s.  However if your child wants to upload or comment on videos, they’ll need their own account.

Your first step, of course is to have a serious discussion with them about the internet and how to keep safe.  It’s also a good time to let your kids know that not everyone in the world is as wonderful as you are!  No need to scare them, but they should know that there are people out there who would like to harm them.

Kids Health  provides some great info about internet safety for kids.  Here’s a short quote from their article:

“….your kids’ best online protection is you. By talking to them about potential online dangers and monitoring their computer use, you’ll help them surf the Internet safely.”

Here are some guidelines for setting up YouTube with your child:

• YouTube policy says your child must be 13 or older to have an account.
• Set up a new e-mail address first.  This e-mail will only be used for this YouTube account.  Gmail is free, easy to use and easy to set up multiple e-mail’s.  (And since Google owns YouTube, it makes setup a snap.)
• Ask your child to only share this e-mail/YouTube account with their friends.
• Provide as little personal information as you can during setup.  I would lie about the birthday, so that it appears to be an older person.  Pick a date that you can remember though, because that is something that Gmail may ask if you lose your password..
• Forward all e-mails from that account to your childs regular e-mail AND to your e-mail.
• Set up the YouTube account from that e-mail.  Again, don’t provide any personal info that is not absolutely required.
• Remind your child to be mindful of the videos they upload.  Content can give away the age of a person, even if you have an older age in your profile.
• Monitor the YouTube account, any comments on each video, and any emails on a regular basis.

It’s important to properly setup the YouTube privacy options:

Once the account is set up, turn on the Safety Mode.  This option is found at the bottom of the page.  According to YouTube, you’ll want to:

Use YouTube’s Safety Mode if you don’t want to see videos that contain potentially objectionable material on YouTube. While it’s not 100 percent accurate, we use community flagging and other content signals to determine and filter out inappropriate content.

Let me know if you find this helpful in the comments below.

Gail Eddy

URGENT UPDATE: Synchronizing your Facebook email addresses

If you synchronize your email addresses with your Facebook account, please check your Address Book.  Some of your data could have been changed with the latest Facebook “update” which changed default emails.  You may remember that last week Facebook changed personally selected default email addresses to their new Facebook email.  So far Facebook has not acknowledged that they’ve done anything wrong here, so no global fix is forthcoming.  I’m afraid the fix will be the tedious one-email-at-a-time type of fix.

Here’s an article from TechCrunch which provides more details.

Hope you’re enjoying your day!

Gail

Facebook’s new email

You might have noticed that Facebook phased in a new email address for you a few months ago.  If you’re like me, you’ve ignored all of those notifications.  I don’t know about you, but I have enough email addresses to keep track of without adding a new one!  However, Facebook thinks that their new email is the one you want to use and has changed your default email address to their new Facebook address.  You can leave it as is if you’d like, but if you’d like to change it back, here are the steps:

1. Click the down arrow next to the “Home” button
2. Select “Account Settings”
3. Look at your email settings.  If it has your preferred email address, no need to do anything.  If it doesn’t, click “Edit” on the right hand side
4. Click the button next to your preferred email address
5. Enter your password and select “Save Changes”

In the last week, I’ve seen a few articles about this.  Here’s one from CNN and another from ComputerWorld.

Let me know if you find this helpful in the comments below.

Gail Eddy

Huffington Post Privacy

The Huffington Post thinks you want everyone to know what you’ve read – even the snarky stuff!  (You know, the article you read about Jessica Simpson’s new baby – do you really want your boss to know you read that?!)

How can you change this?  Once you’re logged onto your Huffington Post account, click on your name in the upper right corner.  From the drop-down menu, choose “Profile” as shown below:

Once you click on “Profile”, it will open up a new page.  One of the options in the middle of the page is “Stealth” Mode as shown in the second picture.  Turn that ON and you’ll be able to read any article without broadcasting your reading preferences!

Once you’re on this page, select “Stealth” mode.  That’s all there is to it!

Please let me know if this was helpful in the comments below.

Gail

Facebook Default Privacy Settings

You can set your default privacy settings in Facebook to carry over from your home computer, to your iPhone, to the Library or from where ever you are posting.

To adjust these, click on the little down arrow next to the “Home” button, and select “Privacy Settings”.  Your first option will be to select a default on who can see your posts.  Your options are:

• Public
• Friends
• Custom

If you select “Public”, then everyone can see your posts.  If you select “Custom”, then you can decide which people, or groups of people will see your posts.

Remember that you can always change your default settings on each post!

Thanks for reading – please leave a comment below to let me know if this was helpful.

Gail

Facebook Privacy Settings – Sharing individual posts

Facebook lets you decide who to share each of your posts with.  Your options are:

• Public
• Friends
• Friends except acquaintances
• Only Me
• Custom

Your choice for each post will depend on how you want each post to be used.  If you just want to keep track of an event, you might want to select “Only Me”.  If it’s a post to promote a business, you’ll probably select “Public”.  Remember that your choice for this post, will also be used in subsequent posts, unless you deliberately change it.

If you use one of the default Facebook lists, like “Acquaintances”, you might consider selecting ”Friends except acquaintances”.  The “Custom” setting lets you choose exactly who you want to share the post with.

Please let me know of your questions and comments below.

Enjoy your weekend!

Gail

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