Facebook Is Giving You Your Own Dinosaur To Help You Fix Privacy

Wondering why your parents saw that status update where you basically admitted you’ve been chasing tail non-stop on Tinder? Upset that a certain photo was shared to a friend who shouldn’t have seen it? Facebook is too, and it wants to help you get a better handle on your privacy. That’s why it’s introducing a massive new privacy checkup program that will affect every user of Facebook in the world.

It’s designed to teach users about who they’re sharing content to, to make sure it’s only going out to the people who you want to see it.

Rather than make it a boring questionnaire, Facebook has put a fun little dinosaur on it to get people personally engaged in the process.

The privacy checkup initially serves to expose all the apps you’ve installed into Facebook ever since you joined the social network. Removing them is as simple as one click from the pane, or you can go into your master App Settings page, teaching users about that portal and how they can keep themselves safe in future..

Through the step-by-step process, you’re walked through key pieces of information that you’ve given Facebook and line-by-line shows you who you’re sharing that with right now. Data items include you Hometown, Current City, Education and Work data.

Once you’ve fixed all those settings, your dinosaur goes away for a while. He isn’t extinct, however: the Privacy Checkup dinosaur will now be in the Privacy Shortcuts menu at the top right of everyone’s Facebook.

When the privacy checkup was first rolled out to a limited number of Facebook users, the social network reported that 75 per cent of people offered it completed it the first time it was offered, while 76 per cent of those who completed it found it helpful.

Facebook has built the privacy checkup platform and its friendly dinosaur character on web first, but plans to “incorporate its those learnings” (read: roll it out) with mobile users in the future. It indicated to us, however, that the privacy checkup would stay within Facebook for the meantime as opposed to spreading out over other properties like Instagram, Bolt and Slingshot.

People will start to see the privacy dinosaur pop-up on login from today, and everyone who uses the social network on the web will receive the notification within the week to manage scale issues.


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