<p>What’s up with this thing where you can click and see who’s been viewing your page? I keep seeing it on “friends” walls - some link to where you can click and see who’s been looking at your page.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I’m not really a “creeper” but I have been known to look someone up on occasion to see if they are on Facebook - now they will know if I even clicked once on their page???</p></li>
<li><p>Do I really want to know which people I know OR even creepier, which people I don’t know have tried to look at my page???</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I keep my page pretty private with only friends able to view wall, etc. so it’s not content I’m worried about. It just seems weird to me. </p>
<p>Second part of question:
The other thing that keeps popping up on Facebook is “friend finder” - where you enter in your email and password to find others in your address book on Facebook - Facebook keeps “telling me” that “Your friends so-and-so use Friend Finder to find new friends!” Wouldn’t it be a bad idea to enter in my email private info (password) so that Facebook can look in my address book???</p>
<p>Any info you can share on these “features” appreciated! (but no lectures please on the “evils” of Facebook - I’m not addicted and it’s a simple daily enjoyment for me)</p>
<p>I avoid Friend Finder. I just don’t like the idea of FB having all my contacts’ addresses. </p>
<p>I’ve never noticed the “who’s been viewing” feature. I’ll have to look for that. (Uh oh. I hope son’s future roomate isn’t creeped out that I looked at his page after the 2 of them made friends. :o)</p>
<p>That is an application, not a Facebook feature. I ignore it, like I do all other applications and games. In fact, for that one I went somewhere on the site and totally blocked it, so it will never surface again.</p>
<p>Personally I would not give FB any more information than they already have. They have a history of adding new features whose default settings are ‘share with the world’. Unless you know about these (usually through another fb user) you don’t know it exists to even change the setting to protect your privacy. The new privacy interface is designed to make it easier. I still don’t know how many people pay attention. I wouldn’t give out your email password. You can manually search for friends by name, once a few are on your friend list you will recognize mutual friends and it usually grows from there.</p>
<p>The features to track who views your page are against fb TOS and are illegal. People offering these types of applications face legal conviction.</p>
<p>Just make sure you keep your security settings tight, you’ll be fine. There are several articles in the NYTimes and Wall Street Journal that walk you through these settings if you need help. Again, fb default, or recommended settings may give out more information than you want.</p>
<p>I realize that my OP might have looked like I was asking if I should give out my email/password. Correcting myself to say, “duh?! do they think I would?” because I would NEVER do that - what bothers me is how many people actually do!</p>
<p>Just a cautionary note to share with your kids: a good friend of mine does research people he is considering hiring on FB. If he finds objectionable things, they won’t be hired. He even fired someone once because something on FB showed this person with stolen property (from his business). Not enough to warrant a call to the police, but enough to be fired. </p>
<p>Sometimes people get “tagged” in photos that other people post and leave open for anyone to see. You or your child should check for this occasionally and “untag” any ones that you deem inappropriate.</p>
<p>The Facebook founder has made it clear that he will exploit information on Facebook if he can do so. I have little trust of Facebook and its use of the data it collects on me.</p>
<p>^ Yes! We tell our kids very often this is a public forum no matter how tight your security settings are. Someone else takes a picture of you who doesn’t have security settings and you are at risk. They are responsible for their content as well as what others post on their wall. That’s what the ‘delete’ button is for.</p>
<p>The NYTimes, or WSJ has a couple of good articles about this a year ago (I read both so I can’t remember). The statistic they gave of employers that report looking at online networking sites was 40%.</p>
<p>Here’s one to warn your kids about. A kid will lose his cellphone, and then set up a FB group to recollect his friends’ numbers. If he doesn’t set adequate security, those numbers are all public.</p>
<p>Indeed, as a security check, try Googling your kid’s cell phone number.</p>
<p>Where is that? Is that where you click on friend feed, and then “suggestions” appear of people “you know” that you can “friend”? Under my suggestions, there is no way that FB would know to make these suggestions unless the people that they suggest looked at my wall. Included in that list, for example, is a person listed from HS who I barely knew in my HS a long long time ago, a realtor who listed a relative’s home 3 years ago, a mother of my son’s friend who I have not spoken with in many years, a couple of complete strangers, etc.</p>
<p>Does this mean that if I click someone’s name and view, they will see that I was on their FB page? Is this how FB works? I am a total novice, so forgive my ignorance about this.</p>
<p>Northeastmom, the responses I am getting (and what I suspected) are that this is NOT true and people are NOT able to see who is viewing their page.</p>
<p>BUT, what I have been seeing is some of my friends on my wall with a link to that goes something like this:</p>
<p>OMG… I can’t believe this actually works! Now you really can see who views your profile!!! WOAH –> (then a link appears here - I deleted the link address)</p>
<p>Okay, but it seems to then suggest that the person who viewed your page is a person you might want to “friend”, right? Isn’t that the same thing? It wouldn’t say that Mary Jones clicked your page today, but it suggests that they viewed it at some point to link you and Mary Jones as friends, or am I wrong about that?</p>
<p>Hunt, I cross posted with you. So then there isn’t a record of people that are clicking onto your pages, or at least FB is not letting Hunt know that NEM just clicked onto Hunt’s wall?</p>
<p>I have two accts on my computer- one for me & I set up for H. He asked me to, but he doesn’t ever use it.</p>
<p>Facebook scans your settings and identifies people who have similar interests/friends etc, you also can set your privacy controls to " friends only" so no one can see anything unless you have added them. There isn’t any way others can see who is looking at their page.</p>
<p>Update: Just had another friend post something about the link to “find out who is viewing your page” - sounds like if you click on it, they start asking for LOTS of personal/email info and there are never ending questions - in other words, you will answer lots of questions - they will get info on you, but you will never get the “find out who is viewing info” - weird.</p>