How Do I Register For Facebook And Not Have It Linked To Other Account

Is information technology possible to be a passive user of Facebook? I want to read announcements relating to friends and colleagues, and mayhap mail comments, without building a profile with photos, a timeline and then on. I have managed perfectly well without joining, but occasionally miss useful data that is not available elsewhere. Eira

What'south known as "lurking" – being a member without actively participating – is very common. To quote Jakob Nielsen, "In nigh online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, ix% of users contribute a petty, and 1% of users account for almost all the activeness." This is known as the 1% rule, and it'south obviously a gross generalisation.

Facebook'south participation levels appear to be much higher than that. We don't know the number of lapsed or (literally) dead accounts, but in September 2018, Facebook reported 2.27 billion monthly agile users (up 9.6% over the previous year) and most 1.v billion daily active users (up nine.three%), despite losing about one million users in Europe.

While in that location'southward no obligation to participate, at that place are much trickier questions most privacy and tracking.

What distinguishes Facebook from Twitter, Reddit, Metafilter and so on is that it is based on real identities, which are fundamentally public. While you can cull how much information yous post on Facebook, and how widely you share it, your friends may already have given Facebook your electronic mail address as part of the "detect friends" procedure. Some of them may too take posted images of you, mentioned yous in comments, or linked to things yous posted on other services. As a result, when you sign up, Facebook may already know who near of your friends are.

This information may exist about you, merely it isn't yours: it belongs to the people who shared it.

Either style, whatsoever organization that knows your existent name tin can probably find out a lot near you lot. This was already obvious in 1999 when Sun'due south Scott McNealy said: "You have zero privacy anyway. Go over it."

Minimal Facebooking

Facebook's many communication services make it a useful tool. — Facebook's many advice services brand it a useful tool, just you don't have to requite it equally of data it asks for to use it. Photograph: Eric Gaillard/Reuters

To sign up for a Facebook business relationship, you need a name and a working electronic mail address or mobile phone number. You can apply whatsoever proper name you are known by. All the same, if yous run into a problem, you may have to provide an acceptable form of ID to verify it later.

Yous will also be asked for your date of birth – considering you have to exist at least 13 years old to join – and your selection of gender. Both may be used for advertising purposes. After that, everything is optional.

Facebook will desire you to complete your new profile past uploading a mug shot and a cover photo, entering the names of schools or colleges you attended, where you live and so on. You are not obliged to practise any of this. Your profile photo could be a cartoon character. However, in that location could be from dozens to thousands of people who take the same proper noun as you. The more details you enter, the easier it will be for friends to find you lot.

Side by side, to brand the system work for you, you have to "friend" people you lot know. Facebook encourages yous to upload your contacts book (see higher up). It's much better to rails people down 1 past one, though it is more than piece of work.

And that's information technology. When your friends mail service things on Facebook, they will appear in the news feed. You will besides have a timeline under your name, which used to be your wall. You can't get out of having these, merely again, you don't have to postal service anything to them.

Privacy settings

When you lot practise post something, you can command who sees it by using each postal service's settings menu (three dots), but it'due south improve to choose settings for your whole account. To do this, click the down-arrow on the far correct of the blue heading bar, select Settings from the card, and then Privacy. The main entry is "Who can run across your future posts?" Y'all probably won't desire to employ Public, which means anyone on or off Facebook. Instead, limit visibility to friends, perhaps, or customise it. You can exclude by name anyone you don't want to encounter something.

You can likewise limit the range of people who can look you lot up using the email address and/or phone number you gave Facebook, though that tin can get in harder for friends to find you lot.

Where it asks "Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile?", respond no.

You should also visit the ad preferences page and click on "Ad settings". This lets you turn off adverts based on "data from partners" (external websites, not Facebook), and adverts on external websites based on your activities on Facebook. This removes the advantages of tracking you. Otherwise, Facebook could utilise the information that you visit, for example, car websites to show you car ads.

You can also change "Ads that include your social actions" to "No one". This stops Facebook from using your actions (signing up for events, using apps, making recommendations and so on) to promote them to your friends.

Finally, Facebook publicises birthdays. The setting is on your Almost folio nether "Contact and basic info". Note that you lot can set unlike privacy levels for your engagement of nascence and your year of birth. You could set both to "Merely me" or just keep the year – and therefore your age – private.

This description barely scratches the surface of the many ways you lot tin can manage your data. Facebook provides detailed control over your privacy, and how it can target you lot with the adverts that pay for its costless service. The problem is that it would have many hours to notice, understand and customise all the settings bachelor. Understandably, virtually people simply don't care enough to make the endeavour when the only visible benefit may be seeing less appropriate advertisements.

Facebook disconnect

Facebook Connect or "Log in with Facebook" is an identity system that, conveniently, lets you log into other websites, play games and then on with your Facebook ID. While this saves creating a lot of different login names and passwords, it also lets Facebook know what you are doing away from Facebook.

This isn't a new idea, and Facebook's tracking network is much smaller than Google's, simply it'south what drives the use of things similar Ghostery, Privacy Badger, Disconnect.Me and Redmorph.

You can opt out of using the whole platform. This stops Facebook Connect from working, and disables all the apps and games that have been used past third parties to harvest user data.

To practice this, go to the Settings page and select "Apps and websites". Scroll down to the Apps, Websites and Games department, click Edit then select "Plow off". I got some dire warnings when I did this a few years agone, but as y'all're a new user, it shouldn't affect annihilation.

Y'all can also limit Facebook tracking by running Facebook in a container in the Firefox browser.

Information technology's not just Facebook

Facebook explained in a blog mail what sort of data it collects and how it does it. Plain, information technology mentioned that other internet companies are doing exactly the aforementioned things.

In fact, the chief difference between Facebook and LinkedIn and some rivals is that most (only non all) of the personal information on Facebook and LinkedIn has been willingly contributed past users for their own purposes, rather than gathered by spying. Facebook has go the universal kicking boy partly because of its carelessness, and considering its massive scale means its blunders can impact far more people, or even whole nations.

Ultimately, however, the problem is not Facebook but "surveillance capitalism": the concern model whereby users trade personal information for services instead of paying for them.

As security expert Bruce Schneier wrote last twelvemonth in a blog post on Facebook and Cambridge Analytica: "for every article almost Facebook's creepy stalker behaviour, thousands of other companies are breathing a commonage sigh of relief that it'southward Facebook and non them in the spotlight. Because while Facebook is 1 of the biggest players in this space, there are thousands of other companies that spy on and manipulate us for profit".

For those of us with distant friends and family, Facebook is just too valuable to surrender, and its replacement(s) might well exist worse. Information technology'southward the whole organisation that needs fixing.

Have you got a question? Email information technology to Enquire.Jack@theguardian.com