keeping my life off of Facebook while refusing to be a part of it?
December 16, 2009 7:38 PM   Subscribe

As a Facebook refuser (I've never signed up, never will) is there a best way to monitor any photos or writings that may be linked to my (quite rare) real name?

I have a very unique last name, and my combination of $firstname $lastname is shared by fewer than a dozen people in the US, and I'm the only one in my State with this combination.

I don't have any mortal enemies or more/worse skeletons in the closet than the average person my age, but I like to control what is tied to my name, and I'd be pretty pissed off if there was something floating in facebook that I was unaware of that I don't want anyone with a keyboard seeing. At least with Flickr I can search public photos and tags.

I'm not losing any sleep over this, but *other than* signing up for an account, is there anything else I can do? I have a few friends that I guess I could ask to look for me, but does that seem weird? Can photos on FaceBook only be tagged with names that are linked to other FB accounts?
posted by anonymous to Computers & Internet (22 answers total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
Can photos on FaceBook only be tagged with names that are linked to other FB accounts?

No, they can be tagged with any name, but there is no linking between photos tagged with the same name if it's not a Facebook name. It's basically just the same as a caption.
posted by smackfu at 7:40 PM on December 16, 2009


No, you can tag a photo with anyone's name on facebook. I have photos tagged with the names of mine and my friends' kids, for example.
posted by gaspode at 7:41 PM on December 16, 2009


Photos on Facebook also are tagged if the person "likes" the picture, even though they aren't in it!

You CAN search Facebook for your name without signing up. You will probably not be able to view pages set to private without signing up and "friending" them, but you can track the usage of your name without joining.

I only got a Facebook because my father is on it, and it's the only way I have to contact him.

I also have a name that is rare as well. I am the ONLY person in the US with the name, although more people are using my nickname!
posted by Jinx of the 2nd Law at 7:46 PM on December 16, 2009


you could always sign up with a faux account, not under your name, and use it to search. that's what i use to do on myspace
posted by nadawi at 7:51 PM on December 16, 2009 [2 favorites]


You could probably set up a Google Alert to tell you about new instances of your name that show up in the parts of Facebook that Google indexes (I don't know how much of FB is Googvisible, as I too am not a FB user.)
posted by hattifattener at 7:52 PM on December 16, 2009 [1 favorite]


What gets tricky is that a lot of photos are privacy limited in weird ways. So you could have a friend search for you, but they might only be able to see photos that friends or friends of friends had taken. That is, there might still be photos with your name attached [I think?] that weren't visible to your friends. The good news is, it's super simple once you've found a photo in facebook, to share it outside of facebook, so if a friend saw such a photo they could actually send you a link to it, not just describe it and/or screenshot it.

So more specifically because you might not know this if you haven't been there. Let's say there's a photo of me and my sister [who is not on facebook] and her boyfriend that I took. I might tag it with my name, her name, and his name. My name is linked to my account, by me. When I add his name, it gives me an option to choose his name from a list of my friends, or just add a name that I type. So I could add a name that is linked to his facebook account, or I could call him Fuzzy Wumpkins and tag it that way (more like a caption, not a link to anything. people use this on facebook to goof with other people all the time). Her bofyriend could, if he chose UNTAG the photo if it were tagged with his real name and linked to his account. If I did not tag home someone else could come along later and tag him. Once a photo has been untagged, I believe it can't be retagged. The tag for my sister's name [which is fairly common] wouldn't link to her profile page because she doesn't have one, so it would be more of a caption. I'm not entirely certain but I believe that if she joined facebook later, it would not automatically become linked to her profile, some affirmative action would need to be taken.

And if I have my privacy settings set up a certain way, my photos may only be visible to my friends or my friends and their friends. So, it's a tricky question that you ask. I'd be happy to scan my facebook network for mentions of you if you want, email is in profile, etc.
posted by jessamyn at 7:57 PM on December 16, 2009


I've noticed incoming links to my blog from facebook, but have no idea what they're about.

Facebook should be kicked out of routing tables and amputated from the internet.
posted by smcameron at 8:20 PM on December 16, 2009 [8 favorites]


Can photos on FaceBook only be tagged with names that are linked to other FB accounts?

Yes. Sortof. See, you can tag anything on facebook, like "crazy bartender" or "my new couch". If you hover your cursor over "my new couch" it puts a box around the couch. Your friends will rejoice at the news that your new photo album contains "my new couch". That is all. Your face is tagged with your name in this single instance, but multiple photos are not linked to your name or face.

Photos are not searchable within a worldwide facebook search, only people, groups, and networks. For someone to have access to this photo of you they would have to know who has it. This person that has the photo would have to have no privacy controls on their photos, and then someone could see your photo linked to your name.

It would be the same thing as going to a person's house, and flipping through a photo album on their coffee table that has captions. There a photo could be found of your face, linked to your name. Of course then anyone in this house could take that photo to a copy shop/send it to a thousand people in an email. Most people lock their house doors, and their photo privacy settings. This is something out of your control. I don't think theres a whole lot you can do about it, aside from refraining from doing embarrassing things in front of cameras.

Rest assured, facebook is not creating a skeleton data collecting account tied to your name. When my sister joined facebook, I thought maybe all the photos I had previously tagged of her would be linked once we became friends. It wasn't the case.
posted by fontophilic at 8:42 PM on December 16, 2009


I've noticed incoming links to my blog from facebook, but have no idea what they're about.

That means that people are sharing your blog on facebook. A human is passing on your blog to another human being. You should probably be flattered.
posted by fontophilic at 8:50 PM on December 16, 2009 [6 favorites]


If you can't find it, then it's very likely that 99.9999% of the other people in the world can't find it either, even if there is a photo. All other internet users have the same tools as you. So if you're worried about online reputation protection, you should be safe.
posted by visual mechanic at 9:08 PM on December 16, 2009


I'm not entirely certain but I believe that if she joined facebook later, it would not automatically become linked to her profile, some affirmative action would need to be taken

Vraiment. I've untagged the "unlinked" version of friends' names on my photos when they join FB and someone tags their active FB name.
posted by desuetude at 9:18 PM on December 16, 2009


Not definitive, but: I have some friends who are vehemently anti-FB, and have a highly uncommon name. I just searched for it on FB, and got nothing at all. (Their name appears quite a lot on Google, and FB displayed web search results, but there was nothing on FB itself).

As I'm sure you realise, your best method of keeping off FB is to ensure that all your friends know that you really, really don't want them to upload any pics of you. (Or maybe they could blur your face if you appear in group shots; I do this for some friends).
posted by Infinite Jest at 12:32 AM on December 17, 2009


You might try doing a Google advanced image search on the Facebook.com domain: Go to Google, click Image Search, click Advanced, enter your name in quotation marks in the search field, and enter facebook.com in the domain field. I don't know how complete the results are, however, or even if tags add info that Google can find.
posted by PatoPata at 1:51 AM on December 17, 2009 [1 favorite]


I was a f******k refuser. Now, I use a made up name instead (with a throw-away email account) and only use it to play wordtwist and to access things I can only do that way.
posted by Obscure Reference at 5:21 AM on December 17, 2009


you could always sign up with a faux account, not under your name, and use it to search.

Yes, the easiest way for you to rest easier would be to create a Facebook account with a common but made-up name (e.g. Sam Smith). You can even use your normal email address but set it to private. Don't upload a photo or fill in any info, since you clearly don't want to. Periodically search for your name on Facebook using this account. If you find things about yourself that you don't like, send a Facebook message to the user who uploaded them and say, "Hi, you posted ___ about me. Sam Smith isn't my real name -- I'm [your real name]. I'd appreciate if you could please [whatever you'd like them to do]. Thanks."

While it's true that some content on Facebook can be found without logging in, I'm pretty sure you'll have a better chance of finding any offending content if you are logged in.
posted by Jaltcoh at 7:04 AM on December 17, 2009


You can even use your normal email address but set it to private.

To be clear, I meant you can set that specific piece of information, your email address, to private by logging into Facebook and going to Settings --> Privacy, then opting for only you to be able to see it. No need to create a throaway email address. (The problem with throaway email addresses, aside from the effort of creating them, is that they get disabled if you don't regularly log in to them, which seems like a problem if you intend to continue this monitoring for the long term.)
posted by Jaltcoh at 7:07 AM on December 17, 2009


*throwaway...
posted by Jaltcoh at 7:32 AM on December 17, 2009


People that think they are protecting themselves by not creating accounts on these sites are mistaken. If you don't create a presence for yourself then it leaves the door open for others to create something for you. Even if that is just a caption on a picture of you goofing off. I've seen this happen a lot. For example, my grandfather who has absolutely no interest in FB has an account that was created for him by my aunt. I've also seen friends create profiles for other friends for the sole purpose of being able to tag them in photos.

In my opinion the best thing to do is create a very minimal profile using your name and fill the gap. Adjust the privacy settings to disallow as much as possible including photo tagging. Then forget about it. The internet only houses the information you provide it with and by filling the gap you are preventing others from adding that information for you.

I also think there are moral implications to being against the invasion privacy that FB entails for you personally and then making a fake account to invade the privacy of others. Seems pretty hypocritical to me. It shows me that people are less worried about privacy and more worried about what other people would/should/do think of them.
posted by Gainesvillain at 7:54 AM on December 17, 2009 [3 favorites]


I also think there are moral implications to being against the invasion privacy that FB entails for you personally and then making a fake account to invade the privacy of others. Seems pretty hypocritical to me.

I don't think the OP wants to "invade" other people's privacy. If someone, let's call him Bob, has posted a picture of Bob with the OP, and the OP finds it and doesn't like it and requests that it be deleted (or un-tagged), the OP hasn't "invaded" Bob's privacy by looking at the picture. Bob gave up any privacy interest he might have had in the picture by voluntarily posting it for the world to see. There are some AskMetafilter questions where the OP is asking to do something so immoral that it makes sense for the answers to say "you shouldn't do what you want to do," but I don't think this is one of them.
posted by Jaltcoh at 8:16 AM on December 17, 2009


Your best bet is to search for your name on Google limiting it to facebook.com. Only a small subset of people are going to be putting their content in public like that though.
posted by smackfu at 8:32 AM on December 17, 2009


The privacy issues about being photographed in public are pretty well defined by our various countries' laws. It would be more appropriate to discuss the intended destination of photos with the person taking them of you than to keep an eye on them online, an act that is contrary to what you would have others do to you. Therein lies the hypocrisy. It isn't appropriate to sacrifice the privacy of others to protect your own, even if it is only you accessing their information. Just my opinion.

Also, I wasn't calling the anonymous poster of this question amoral, but rather pointing out conflicting modes of thought involved in the suggestions of others to create a false account. If I found out someone was using a fake account to monitor what I was doing surreptitiously I would be more upset than if someone I didn't know was using their legitimate account to find out details that I'd posted for others to see. As for what others post about me? That is where carving your own niche and controlling those inputs comes in as I stated previously.
posted by Gainesvillain at 8:46 AM on December 17, 2009


I agree that there is some tension between not wanting to sign up, but wanting to control what's there. You can create a Facebook account that's so locked down that people cannot even find you by searching for your exact name. You have greater control over what's on Facebook if you have access to it. A philosophical refusal to register precludes participating, an important part of which is controlling your presence. Tough dillema.
posted by scarabic at 1:47 PM on December 17, 2009 [1 favorite]


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