Photo tagging in Facebook is very popular as people love to share the photos and let everyone know who their friends are. With this popularity comes some much unwanted spam, many times unbeknownst to those that are actually tagging friends in photos. Disabling the ability to allow friends to tag you in photos could be necessary, especially for those that have a more open policy when it comes to friending on Facebook. We know your friends do not mean any harm and do not want to be the one that tags you and exposes you to spam, however when they allow an application or a website to gain access to their profile, they are inviting in access to your profile … unless you have taken the necessary steps to protect your profile. One of them is to disable photo tagging.
How to Disable Facebook Photo Tagging
1. Account. At the drop down menu, click on Privacy Settings.
2. Privacy Settings. Located at the bottom left is Apps and Websites. Click on the Apps and Websites to gain access to what is shared through applications and websites.
3. Apps and Websites. Once you click on “edit your settings” a new window opens for you to control what is shared. Here you click on “Edit Settings” at Info accessible through your friends.
4. Info accessible through your friends. Once you click to edit settings, yet another new window opens which is the most important as it relates to your privacy settings. There are a lot of choices contained within this window and where you decide what is shared with outside apps and websites. To disable photos and videos, simply uncheck the box and save your changes. In doing so, you will be blocking your friends from being able to tag you in a photo. They may still @yourname in a status update or a comment however they will not be able to tag you in the actual photo.
The second part of being tagged in photos comes in the form your friends’ photo tagging suggestions. The suggestions are a bit more protected when enabled as, according to Facebook,
However, if a photo “looks” like you, your name is suggested. Naturally this is enabled by default and would need to be disabled so you can opt out.
How to Opt out of Suggested Facebook Photos
If you have customized settings as I do, the following steps would need to be taken to opt out of suggested photo tagging.
1. Account. Once again you need to access your privacy settings which is easily done through your account and clicking on privacy settings.
2. Privacy Settings. As stated above, when you have customized privacy settings, you would need to click Customize Settings.
3. Things Others Share. A new window opens when you click customize settings and opting out is located under the Things Others Share area. Disabling is very easy as it is a drop down where you click disable as opposed to enable. When you do click edit settings, the photos of people that you interact with most is displayed. As you are unaware of what their settings are (ie are they are set to everyone where you are set to friends only) in trying to keep your profile set a comfortable privacy setting for you, opting out may may be something to consider.
Your Facebook settings, while we can never believe are completely customizable and protected, do have some measures you can take to protect your photos, especially if you are posting of your children or were a little over zealous at the college parties and found yourself in photos that are not as flattering as you would like.