So You Want to Make a Facebook Account?

[This post is a follow-up to "Google: Good Privacy Starts with Good Account Creation"]


Once upon a time, when Facebook was still a private place for college friends to share, sign-up was easy:

And in those good old days, you could fully exercise your right to privacy, with only two exceptions: your Name and your Networks were always considered public. Now there's a little more to it:

Facebook thrives on real world identities. It used to be more for privacy and security, but now that a half billion people are locked in, these days it seems more like it's for crossing the offline and online streams to create a really meaty digital dossier for marketers (and who knows what other purposes).


About the birthday, and "Why do I need to provide this?":

It's an open secret that some users don't enter their real DOB. While I wouldn't encourage anyone to artificially increase their age to bypass legal compliance issues, I would definitely encourage anyone who does not plan to show their birth date to friends to choose a date that puts them well under 18. Why? You get additional privacy protections not available to the general public.


Choose your name wisely too. Facebook really wants your real name and actively weeds out accounts using pseudonyms (with the expected collateral damage), but a lucky few people do manage to fly under the radar. There are no easy second chances. If you try to change your name later, it takes manual intervention from a Facebook employee:

That's it? Well, no. Once you confirm your registration, you'll be guided through additional personal information gathering, much of which you can skip, but certain things are required. Ultimately, choose carefully when you add information to any field that becomes what Facebook calls "Publicly Available Information " (PAI):

• Name
• Profile Picture
• Gender
• Current City
• Networks
• Friend List
• Pages

Also remember that Pages now includes "Connections" created by information entered in certain parts of users' profiles, "including your current city, hometown, education and work, and likes and interests".


What does it mean for your personal information to be PAI? It means that even if you do manage for it not to show in your profile or in Facebook search or in public search, it may still be accessed by Facebook-enabled applications and websites. There's a clue in all of that about where Facebook's priorities are.


Now we're done, right? Well, actually before you fill out your profile you should review your privacy settings, so nothing slips out before you get your setings the way you want.

Be sure to visit all of the sections that affect your privacy. The layout is subject to change, but the basics should be accessible from here:

http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy

It can take quite a while to wade through all of the settings, there are many screens, many menus, and many clicks, and odds are you won't have full confidence in what's really going to happen with certain settings, so unfortunately you have to take your best shot and hope it works like you think.

Like with the PAI discussed above, there are certain choices that are just not available any longer. For example, you used to be able to block any new friend requests, but now the best you can do is limit it to Friends of Friends:

Similarly, there's no longer any way to opt out of Facebook messages (Facebook likes to keep your interactions all in the family):

Congratulations! You now have a working Facebook account. Only the basics have been covered here. Be sure to review the Terms and explore the Privacy Resources, including the actual Privacy Policy (which changes regularly). After all, this is presumably your real world identity and reputation Facebook now has significant control over. With so much more at stake, understanding how it all works –not a trivial task– is critical.

UPDATE 26 April 2010: Inside Facebook reports:

"Some new users signing up for Facebook are starting to see Pages integrated into the process, including the number of other people who like each Page... One note is that all of these Pages appear to be public by default, something new users may not realize as the fact isn’t disclosed within the sign-up process."

Yet another auto-opt-in gotcha for unsuspecting new users who may not want to publicize that kind of activity but don't yet have the knowledge to effectively manage the settings or even understand the implications.

Related Posts:
Facebook: the Nuclear Options
Google: Good Privacy Starts with Good Account Creation