Facebook Places: How To Disable Or Turn Off Location Alerts And Protect Your Privacy

Recently Facebook has brought in a new feature to their social networking platform, the location feature also called Facebook Places. For the unaware, Facebook Places is location based networking which lets your friends know where you are by using your Smartphone’s GPS.

As of now Facebook Places is available on iPhone in most places in the US. It will soon be available on Android and Blackberry and the location aware networking will be extended to other countries as well. When you ‘check in’ to your mobile phone using this location feature, your friends or other chosen ones get alerts telling them where you are. If they are hanging out in a nearby coffee shop, you can very well get some company!

Only when you click the ‘Check In’ button, will your location be displayed. By default Facebook Places sends locations alerts to your friends only. However some of you might be afraid of losing your privacy because of this location feature, here is a small guide to turn off Facebook Places.

Where Are The Privacy Settings For Facebook Places

Whether you want to turn off Facebook Places entirely, change who can view when you check-in, block certain people from finding your location, stop the feature that shows your location to any one near by, or disable the option that lets your friends check you in to Places, all these can be done from your Facebook Privacy settings page.

Go to Account –> Privacy Settings.

Click on ‘Customize settings’ which can be found beneath the list of your privacy settings.

Turn Off Or Disable Facebook Places

In the Privacy Settings page, scroll down in the list of ‘Things I Share’ to the option ‘Places I check in to’. By default this is ‘Friends Only’. Click on ‘Customize’ to edit the setting.

In the pop up dialog, select ‘Only Me’ in the ‘Make this visible to These people’ list box. Click on ‘Save Setting’.

Allow Facebook Places For Only Selected People

Say you have some very close friends with whom you like to share your location info. In the ‘Custom Privacy’ dialog (see below screenshot), select the option ‘Specific People…’. In order to add the names, start entering the name and Facebook will show suggestions from which you can pick up the right ones.

Hide Facebook Places Location From Certain People

In the ‘Hide this from’ section of the ‘Custom Privacy’ dialog (see screenshot above), enter the names of the people with whom you do not want to share your location information.

Stop Facebook Places From Showing Your Location To Nearby People

Facebook Places has yet another feature which lets people nearby know that you have checked in, even if they are not your friends. In case you are concerned about your privacy you can disable it by clearing the ‘Enable’ check box for the option titled ‘Include me in “People Here Now” after I check in’ in the ‘Things I share’ section.

Don’t Allow Friends To Check You In To Places

By default this option is not set. If privacy is a concern, make sure you disable this feature by selecting ‘Disabled’ from the drop down list titled ‘Friends can check me in to Places’ in the ‘Things others share’ section.