Remove comments on Facebook

Question:

Joey asks: If i place a comment on someone’s profile or photo, that gets logged in my recent activity and in other people’s news feed. I would like to hide comments in both. Can you help

Answer:

Thanks for your question, Joey.

The good news is that you can easily hide entries in your activity feed (including comments) by hitting the remove button on their right hand side. The bad news is that given the latest changes in Facebook privacy settings, there is no straightforward way to hide your comments from other people’s news feed using the privacy settings, unless you are ok with actually restricting them from all content you post on Facebook (status updates, links, pics, video).

Hopefully, Facebook will re-consider porting the previous privacy settings back. Will keep you guys posted, and update this blog post once that will happen.

Dorothy asks: “One of my acquaintances has tagged me on several pictures. Those pics now appears in my Photos section. How can i remove photos in which i was tagged on Facebook?”

Thanks for the question Dorothy. Hiding or removing a tagged photo is pretty simple. Just go ahead and navigate to the photo page and hit Remove Tag next to your name. This will remove that pic from tagged photos album. By the way, once you untag yourself, people won’t be able to tag you again on that photo.

The caveat is that people with permission to view your photos will potentially know you were tagged as that will appear in their News Feed. Apparently, this will also appear under Recent Activity in your profile.

This issue can be solved by tweaking your privacy settings as following:

1. Under Account, go to Privacy Settings
2. Hit Profile Information
3. Scroll down to the Photos and Videos of Me section
4. Set the privacy level accordingly (Only Me, or block specific people as needed).
5. Hit Preview my Profile and check. Note that there is an handy feature that allows you to preview your profile as it appears to any of your friends. You might want to check it out, to make sure you are all set.

If you are an avid Facebooker, you might want to actualize your default profile picture every now and then. Coincidentally,and perhaps due to Facebook latest user interface changes, a few readers pinged me on how to change their profile photos. So although there are several ways to default a pic, here’s the simplest i can think of:

First off, if you haven’t done it yet, make sure that you upload your photo to a Facebook album.

Next, navigate to the Facebook album into which you have uploaded your new pic and hit your photo.

From the lower right hand side of the page you just opened, hit Make Profile Picture. This will set the pic as default.

Now you need to crop your new pic as needed in order to make sure it will fit in. Sometimes, cropping a picture on Facebook can be time consuming and you might even notice browser time outs while cropping. Don’t give up .

Last step is to navigate to your profile and verify that your profile picture was updated.

Last week, Todd and Shank asked us what would be a good way to remove their names from the Facebook search results as they were getting spammed by people whom they even didn’t hear about.

With New Facebook privacy settings in place, you can’t completely remove your name from the Facebook search results, however you can easily limit the number of people who can search for your profile. The process is pretty simple and is one of the recommended practices for safeguarding your Facebook privacy. So here it goes:

1. On Facebook, choose Settings | Privacy Settings | Search
2. Se the value of Facebook Search Results to be Only Friends. This will allow only your Friends to find you on Facebook Search results.

Stay tuned for more tips on improving your Facebook privacy.

This morning i received a Facebook message from one of my acquaintances which i haven’t heard for quite a bit. The message contained a link shortened but one of those url shortening services as well as the text youtube.

It was evident that it looked like a virus/worm automatically spreading out from this guy’s inbox to all its acquaintances. After taking a closer look at the url (don’t do it on your PC!), i noticed that it prompted me to save an exe file which was undoubtedly one of those nasty viruses.

In order to make sure your PC doesn’t get infected by these types of viruses which are unfortunately pretty common on Facebook, you would like to make sure that:

1. Don’t  open links attached to Facebook messages unless you recognize the URL. This holds true no matter whether you know the person that sent you the message.
2. Install and update an Anti-Virus program. There several that can be used for free, such as Microsoft Security Essentials.

Any experiences with viruses on Facebook? Feel free to update and warn others.

Everyone is on Facebook these days, and the amount of applications and other tricks you can use for making the most of your Facebook profile is huge. Tehseen has put together an impressive list of 25 extra cool Facebook tips and tricks at our sibling web site EasyTweaks.com.

It is worth checking out this great list of cool Facebook tips and tricks, as it contains cool tricks such as hiding your online presence from other people or accessing Facebook from work or school using Outlook as well as ways to make your Facebook page interact with Firefox, Wordpress blogs, Twitter, Flickr and others.

Enjoy!

Question:

Rachel asks: I spend lots of time on Facebook. Is there a way to appear offline to my friends on Facebook chat?

Answer:

Thanks for the question. There are two options. First is to appear offline to all your friends (useful if you want to appear offline to all your friends)

1. Login to your Facebook web page.
2. Open the Chat panel (lower right hand side).
3. Hit Options and then select Go Offline. That will set your status to offline on chat.

Second option is to appear offline to specific friends lists. This might be useful if you want to avoid specific people but interact with other friends:

1. If you haven’t defined a friends list yet, go ahead and create a friends list (Lists>> Friends>> Create New List).
2. Add specific people you might want to avoid to that list.
3. In the Chat panel, hit Friends List and enable viewing the list in the Facebook chat.
4. Hit the Go Offline icon at the right hand side of your Friends list, as shown below:
5. That’s it!

Question:

Nikki asks: Few weeks ago i went ahead and blocked my ex boyfriend from Facebook. Now we are in touch again and i want to unblock him so we can interact via Facebook and the chat. How to do that?

Answer:

Glad you guys are back. Unblocking a person on Facebook is quite easy:

1. First, Login to your Facebook account web page and click on Settings
2. In the Privacy section you’ll see your Block List.
3. Go ahead and remove your friend from there.
4. Now go ahead and send him a new friend request, so you guys can interact on Facebook again.

Recently, a few readers approached us and requested more how-tos on Facebook. So here is one pretty useful tip that will help you keep unwanted visitors away from your profile and even prevent them from contacting you on Facebook or through the Facebook chat.

So here’s how you block someone on Facebook:

1. First, login to your Facebook account.
2. Hit Settings.
3. In the Privacy section, hit Manage. You’ll see the following:
4. In the Block People section enter the name of who you wish to block. Facebook will search to find a matching person to the name you entered.
5. Once you have selected the correct person, click Block. You might need to execute steps 3-4 as needed for different individuals you would like to avoid.
6. Note that you can also block a specific email address, so an account associated with that address won’t be able to contact you not only today, but also in the future.

Two important remarks before you go ahead and block people:

1. People you have blocked will not be notified about that.
2. If for some reason you would like to restore a relationship with someone you blocked in the past, you will need to send him/her a friend request. Pretty embarrassing, right

Stay tuned for more Facebook tips.

Changed your e-mail id for good but don’t know how to incorporate it into your Facebook account? Here’s how you do it:

1) Click on the settings link located at the top right corner of your profile page.
2) You would see a heading by the name “E-Mail”, Click on “Change” link next to it.
3) Enter your new mail id in the text box. You would be prompted to enter your Facebook password. Enter your Facebook password and hit the confirm button.
4) You would be sent a confirmation mail for the same in your new mail – id. In case you change your mind you can cancel the request by clicking on Cancel request link!