"When I got back from a trip I took abroad with my family earlier this year, my friends mentioned that they'd seen the photos that "I" had posted to Facebook. Except... I hadn't posted any photos to Facebook. I have a Facebook account, but I deliberately have a very minimal presence on it. What my friends were seeing was the photos that my mother had posted, and which I had been tagged in. My privacy was violated by someone else's inability to understand Facebook's privacy settings."

Ironically, it was your OWN inability to understand Facebook's privacy settings.

Go to Settings -> Click " Timeline and Tagging Settings" -> Edit " Who can add things to my timeline? " section : " Review posts that friends tag you in before they appear on your Timeline?" make " Enabled "

There, you will never be tagged in another photo or post, and you now have a review process for anyone who attempts those things, so you can manually up or down those things.

You can't actually opt out of tagging anymore, you can only opt out of tags appearing on your timeline, but people can still see the photos and see that you are tagged in them.

No, this is FB's fault. This should be opt-in.

So you have to join Facebook in order to not be tagged on Facebook?

The tags work in the way OP described only if you are already a user.

I am reminded of a basic fact: You can’t opt-out of other people talking about you online.

Keeping people from tagging you is pretty close, though.

This is a key point that folk are genuinely surprised by when I explain it to them. It's kind of a reverse herd immunity. (I'm sure there's a better analogy.)

> reverse herd immunity (I'm sure there's a better analogy.)

Asymptomatic carrier.

> Asymptomatic carrier.

An asymptomatic carrier is one who exhibits no symptoms of the illness but is carrier who can infect others. I don't believe that is the right analogy here.

With herd immunity you have a group with a large rate of participation, which effectively immunizes those that haven't been.

Facebook is the opposite in that you may not be "infected" but if everyone around you is "infected" you might as well be, because Facebook will piece together your information based on what your friends make available.

Plague almost starts to sound like a better analogy...

Turn on the feature to hide photos you're tagged in and tell people you know they're not to show photos of you to other people then? Or tell people not to take photos of you?

If Facebook didn't exist, people would still show photos to people in other ways. If someone takes your photo they're more than likely going to show it to somebody so I would assume a low level of privacy by default.

> People would still show photos to people in other ways.

I suspect this is not the issue or what the parent means by privacy.

Rather, they probably mean specifically that they don't want their metadata enriched photos being made available, without their explicit knowledge or consent, to Facebook the company (and therefore also indirectly to any number of other companies / advertisers).

If Facebook didn't exist, people certainly wouldn't do that! That's purely an unavoidable side effect of Facebook's current business model.

>Turn on the feature to hide photos you're tagged in and tell people you know they're not to show photos of you to other people then?

That does protect you to some level. But throw in machine learning with image processing and simple metadata extraction and while your friends might not see the photo, Facebook can potentially figure out if you're in the photo whether or not you've been tagged, where the photo was taken, what camera the photo was taken with, what mood you're in, who's with you, what clothes you're wearing etc etc. And then they'll sell that data without ever telling you.

I have a bigger issue with that happening than I have issues with friends seeing photos I may not have wanted to posted myself, to be honest.

> Turn on the feature to hide photos you're tagged in

And how should I do that if I don't have a Facebook account? How do I tell Facebook to not steal my phone number and texts from phones of my friends?

> How do I tell Facebook to not steal my phone number and texts from phones of my friends?

https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/03/fact-check-your-call-an...

"Call and text history logging is part of an opt-in feature for people using Messenger or Facebook Lite on Android. ... This feature does not collect the content of your calls or text messages"

So, to reiterate, how to stop Facebook from stealing your phone number from your friend's phones? Phone numbers aren't content - FB is still stealing it.

It's not stealing if your friend consents to it. If you don't want your phone number shared with Facebook, don't share it with people who are going to share it with Facebook.

You can't tell Facebook not to do that because your phone number and texts are no longer just yours at that point.

Your friend has a copy and can do whatever they want with them, including share them with Facebook, the NSA/FBI/police, their friends, or anyone else they want to.

If you don't want them shared with Facebook, don't give the people who are sharing them with Facebook a copy.

I think your point is under represented in the digital privacy conversation. It doesnt do me a lot of good to stay off of Facebook if Facebook is still mapping me and scraping my contact info from other peoples phones.

You can enable to only tag photos after your approval.

You can add a filter on your profile but the other people did post a photo which include yourself on their wall. So mutual friends still see the post no matter your security settings.