You are here: Home / Archives for Articles

How to Ignore/Block Facebook Event Invites

August 16, 2011

It seems like it happens almost every day! You get Facebook invited to an event you have absolutely no interest in going to. Often times you might receive several invitations daily from various friends, family, and businesses. Fear not, there are some simple ways you can rid your newsfeed of this terrible epidemic, EVENT-SPAM. Here is step-by-step instructions on how to BAN repeat offenders from spamming up your event feed…

Step 1. Click Events in the top left hand corner.

Ignore Facebook Events

Step 2. Click “RESPOND” on the right hand side.

How to ignore Facebook event requests

Step 3. Click “REMOVE THIS EVENT” in the bottom left corner.

Remove this event from Facebook

Step 4.  Click “Ignore invites from…” to permanently IGNORE invites from the repeat inviter.

Facebook Events

Sit back and relax, you’ve successfully ignored the event spammer that has been clogging your feed any causing you unnecessary Facebook stress.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: , , , , ,

SPOTTED: Real Celebrities on Facebook

April 7, 2011

This is a question that we get pretty often…

Are Celebrities on Facebook?

YES! Just like you and me, celebrities are on Facebook. Don’t go searching Facebook for Justin Bieber just yet! There are a couple things you should understand about Facebook Celebrities.

Unfortunately most (major) celebrities don’t have a public Facebook profile where they are actually interacting with their fans.  Typically the celebrity will have a Fan Page run by their Public Relations company.  This “PR” company is doing the grunt work of interacting with fans.  Many also do this for Twitter. It’s not because they don’t love you.  Rather, they just don’t have time to respond/interact with their fans and want to keep a good public face.

Charlie Sheen Facebook

Good News: Celebrities often do have Facebook Profiles | Bad News: They Don’t Use Their Real Names

The dirty little secret is that most celebrities DO have Facebook profile pages but, they often go by a fake moniker. Or, they’ll use a friends Facebook profile to interact with their inner social circles. There are a couple of reasons why they do this…

  1. The 5,000 Friend Cap – Even most low level celebrities would quickly reach this.
  2. Private Life is Private – The like to keep their private lives relatively low key when possible.
  3. Celebrities are People too – They enjoy the simple things just like you, Facebook is one of those things.

Now, the question is… how do you find out what “secret” false name a celebrity is using?  Stalker Much??!? Just Kidding! Sometimes we want to know this information, just to verify they’re somewhat normal.

SECRET Celebrity Facebook BlackLists

It’s rumored that secret “celebrity Facebook black lists” exist which are distributed amongst Hollywood royalty detailing who’s who in this secret Facebook underground. If one was to get ahold of said list you could figure out the names of these uber-celebs but, it’s doubtful they’d accept your obscure friend request.  And, it’s quite doubtful that they’d forget to enable their privacy options. If you’re caught giving out the list, you’ll be forever banished from the celeb circle.  Don’t have the BLACK LIST and you still want to find some Facebook Celebs?

Guide to Finding Facebook Celebrities

  1. Visit a celebrity’s official website and you may find a link to their Facebook profile, Myspace, or twitter page. If there isn’t a link, send a message. You may have to establish an account, but chances are good that if the celebrity has a Facebook or other network account, you will be sent the link.
  2. While it is a hassle to do random searches, scrolling through real celebrities’ friends will net you better luck. This is obviously no guarantee since celebrities may unwittingly accept impersonators as well. However, celebrities do have personal friends who are celebrities.
  3. Suspicious posts may have just stock photos (none personal), or family photos taken while the celebrity is unaware (such as from across the street). Home pictures of themselves and other family members lean more toward legitimacy. Some celebrities will share personal photos of their families or them hanging out on the set with their co-stars. On the other hand, anyone can post a couple of stock photos or cut and paste from a magazine. Trust your instinct.
  4. Real celebrities often have family members as friends. If you check their family members’ friends, you may not see any celebrities listed among them. This is a good indicator that it is the celebrity’s official profile page.
  5. Celebrities are often members of real groups that advocate change of some kind. You can connect with them by visiting these pages; but DO NOT follow a link from any celebrity’s profile page. Investigate links before visiting.
  6. Celebrity names that are misspelled could be those of impostors. Facebook states that “Only the official representative of a public figure, brand, or organization is permitted to create a Facebook Page.” And that they “block a variety of page title terms to prevent the creation of fake, unauthorized, or otherwise abusive pages.” So the misspelled names may be a way of getting around this warning.
  7. Once you are friends with a real celebrity, be brief, respectful and tasteful when posting. Don’t stalk, or annoy or be otherwise overbearing. Enjoy having your celebrity friends respond to your posts or even post something on your wall.
  8. Visit websites like valebrity.com and realcelebrityprofiles.com for their listings of legitimate profile pages.

[Source: eHow Spot Real Facebook Celebrity Profiles]

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: , , , ,

Facebook Places: A Good or a Bad Thing?

April 5, 2011

There are two sides to every argument, or so the old adage goes. There is a great deal of truth to that, and before you decide you opinion on anything, it is always smart to hear both of those sides. When Facebook is such a giant part of all of our lives these days, it is no wonder that there are many, many arguments that swirl around the social media site.

One of those current arguments has to do with one of the most new parts of the site. This is Facebook Places. The little application seems fun and amusing, but as protestors have pointed out, it has the potential to cause a great deal of problems. Let us explore both sides of the Facebook Places argument and then you can decide about it for yourself.

The Good

Facebook Places is a new part of the social media site that allows you to “check in” when you arrive somewhere, be it works, home, the grocery store, the movie theater, or wherever you happen to be. This can be a fun way of letting your friends know what you are up to. This type of location sharing has long been a part of other social sites like Foursquare, so it is no wonder that Facebook has gotten involved in it too.
If you are smart with your privacy information, you can make sure that only your friends can see where you are checking in, and you can even check your friends in through tags if you are with them. This is such a fun way of letting everyone be envious that you are eating out at your favorite steakhouse or buying the latest fashions at the mall.

The Bad

As with most everything else, the downside of Facebook Places is that it tells everyone where you are at and when. Unless you are absolutely sure of your privacy settings and absolutely sure that your friends are all trustworthy, you could run into some problems. Do you really want everyone to know when you are not at home? What happens if your angry ex finds out you are at a restaurant near them and they wish to have a conversation with you?

The best news is that you can disable Facebook Places if you do not want to have any part of it.

How To Disable Facebook Places:

Log in to Facebook. From your Account menu, choose Privacy Settings. You’ll get something like the picture below. Click the Customize option (if it isn’t already selected) and then click the “Customize settings” link (it’s the one next to the pencil below the table depicting your current privacy settings).

How to Disable Facebook Places

2) Under the “Things I Share” heading, all the way at the bottom (of that section), there are two things you may want to change. By default “Places I check in” should be set to only be visible by your friends. If you want to limit it more or less, use the drop down menu to do so. I set mine to “Only Me,” which is as private as you’re going to get. Below that option is “Include me in ‘People Here Now’ after I check in.” It is enabled by default. This will let people know you’re at a particular location via the location’s page or in a search for people near you. Uncheck “Enable” if you don’t want this.

How to Disable Facebook Places

3) Lastly—and this is the important one—if you don’t want your friends to check you into Places, sharing your current location with a bunch of people you may or may not know, go down to the section called “Things Others Share” and find “Friends can check me in to Places.” Initially, mine wasn’t set to anything at all so the default option could be either choice. Regardless, set this to “Disabled” if you don’t want your friends checking you in. Keep in mind that any friend could potentially check you in anywhere. You don’t actually have to be there. If you don’t want anyone playing a practical joke and checking you in to a strip club, for example, this is a good thing to turn off.

How to Disable Facebook Places

Your location can be shared with friends’ applications as well. To turn that off, you have to go to a completely different section. Click the “Applications and Websites” link (pictured to the left) and then go to the “Info accessible through your friends” section. Click “Edit Settings” and you’ll see a bunch of boxes. Anything checked is available to Facebook apps that your friends are using. The last checkbox in this section is “Places I’ve visited,” so uncheck that if you don’t want your friends’ apps grabbing your location information as well.

It is up to you whether or not you think it is innocent and fun or dangerous. Once you decide, you can start using it or disable it on your account.

[Disabling FB Places SOURCE: LifeHacker]

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: ,

Drama: The Facebook Relationship Status

March 21, 2011

We have all seen it, and if you have very many friends on Facebook, it might be something you see on a weekly basis. One friend is single. Another one is in a relationship. Then, there is that one who is complicated. Sometimes, you may watch your friends go from single, to attached, back to single and then attached again in a short amount of time. The Facebook relationship status has become like the gossip mill of the high school lunch room.

Honestly, whether or not you choose to let all of your friends know about your relationship status is a personal preference. You may wish to announce to everyone that your divorce finally went through, and if you do, then Facebook can be the perfect forum for that. However, if you do not wish for the world to know what is going on in that part of your personal life, the good news is that there are three different ways that you can control it. You can choose one or more than one of these options, but no matter how you set it up, it will be up to you if your friends know about your complicated relationships.

Facebook Relationship Status

Facebook “Relationship Privacy” TIP: When you change your relationship status, it comes up on the news feed of all your friends and your own wall. You do not have to leave it this way, though. You can visit the privacy settings page and look for the part that controls what shows up in your news feed. Then you can uncheck the box for relationship status.

If it is already showing up in the news feed, then a simple, one time solution is to go to your wall and then click the “x” to the right. This will immediately remove the relationship status change from everyone’s news feed.
Those two issues control the relationship status change.

What if you do not want anyone knowing even what your relationship status is at all? There is a solution for this too. When you go to your profile settings page and you visit the section called “basic information” you can check the box to remove relationship status. This way, when people visit your profile they will not be able to see this about you.

In Facebook-land, the relationship status is a little like high school drama. It can be a vehicle for gossip, and it can also be a vehicle to get unwanted attention. If you want, you can take this little setting completely off to save yourself from the aggravation.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: , , , ,

Stop That! A Few Things You are Doing Wrong with Your Facebook Account

March 9, 2011

Facebook is all about having fun and enjoying keeping up with family and friends, right? Of course, that was the original intention of the social networking site, but as it grew from one little site of many to being the giant that dominates the market, Facebook has also become a place for criminals and the bad elements of the Internet to try to cause problems for people. It is no secret that, even though it is against Facebook policy, there have been people who set up fake profiles in an attempt to scam or injure another person.

The privacy no nos of Facebook.

There are other ways that people could cause you mischief if you are doing some things wrong on your Facebook page. Below, you will find some statements that you may be making with your Facebook settings, and the reasons why you need to stop that now.

It does not matter if my password is weak, no one would ever guess the name of my pet bunny from fourth grade!

Unfortunately, there are many ways that a weak password can be found out, and there are people out there that can find it out. Instead, you need something strong. It is fine to use that pet bunny’s name, but you need to also include numbers and upper and lower case letters. Instead of “fluffy” make your password “fl72UF1fy.” That may seem confusing, but when you get used to it, it will be no problem and much safer.

I do not care if people know my age, so it’s fine to leave my whole birth date up!

There is a great deal that identity thieves can do with your full birth date. Unless you want someone accessing your credit cards and your bank account, it is much smarter to alter your birth date. If you want people to know your birthday, just include the month and the day or take the birth date off your profile altogether.

Facebook Dog ComicI want all my friends to know when I am on vacation!

When you tell the Facebook world you are going to be out of your house for a certain amount of time, you might as well put a sign up in your yard that says “we are not home, come rob us!” If you want to say you are going to be on vacation, wait until you get back or just do not mention what days you will be gone.

Facebook can be a great site for keeping up with people if used correctly. Avoid these mistakes, and you can enjoy the site without fear of being a victim.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: , , , ,
« Older Posts