If CivWorld is the *only* thing you want to do on facebook...

[dalamb]

I'm seriously considering signing up for Facebook solely to play this instance of the Civ franchise, at least to test it out. I'll be following some of the discussions on this forum to decide whether I want to play the game at all, just like I did with Civ Rev and Civ V, but there's a new critical element in the mix:

Can anyone tell me, or point to things that can tell me, how to limit my exposure to anything else in Facebook besides this one game? What potentially annoying features of Facebook will I inevitably have to deal with? How much can I "turn off" while still being able to participate in Civ World? Can I somehow arrange only to have to deal with the nice people who participate in Civfanatics, instead of the whole world, without having to list every specific person I'm willing to interact with? I'm especially concerned about Facebook's many reported privacy issues, which I know about only anecdotally.

Please, please, don't flame about Facebook one way or the other; I'm trying to gather objective information about a critical part of making a decision.

 

[Moss]

You can make your account completely private if you'd like - to an extent that you having a facebook account is no different than having a forum account here. If you don't add "friends" you can make it so no one can see your any of your information outside of your name. Another thing you could do is make an account on facebook under a false name. As with anything else on the internet, if you're careful with what you share, you should be perfectly fine.

As for the annoying features of Facebook, you can block application requests (from other users) and again, there isn't much you can't control. So as long as you have no annoying friends that you add, you should be pretty well off.

 

[Jet]

I don't understand why it's important to you to research it beforehand. You don't have to use your real name or expose anything about yourself except maybe some of the stuff you're doing in the game. Just try it.

 

[dalamb]

I suppose I could just say I'm the kind of guy that likes to research things. I've heard enough scuttlebutt (such as FB getting dinged by Canada's privacy commissioner) to want to be cautious but not paranoid.

I don't understand yet whether "complete privacy" is what I want -- since I do want to try Civ World if possible, and that does seem to require a fair bit of interaction with other people!

 

[Methos]

Make your account private and decline all friendship requests. I have a facebook account (found out I had two) and I don't use them at all. I just get those stupid emails every now and then saying I should log in because I have requests waiting. Just because you have the account, doesn't mean you have to use it for anything else. I don't.

 

[CustodianV131]

Its a bit of a hassle, but I just did the same thing.

Make an account, provide no info (ie fake or bogus), then go into privacy settings... then (they won't show this) customize and you get a option to set info to "Only me" the highest privacy setting they offer. (you've to do that for every instance of the info you don't want shared) Just don't give them a lot of info to work with. If you want you could even make a temp e-mail-account just for it.

Its totally possible to do.

They will count you in their total user number though which they like to taunt around

 

[dalamb]

OK, sounds reasonable. I'm a little surprised that still lets me play Civ World, though.

 

[awesome]

also, you don't even have to use your real email address. i forget if they want you to verify or not because i've had facebook since it was only for college students, so use a temporary one. it's just extra important that you write everything down if you do this.

 

[bestrfcplayer]

I might sign up on Facebook just for this as well.

 

[Boten Anna]

Note that Facebook uses ridiculously scarily accurate algorithms to sniff out people you know, and one thing it seems to be able to do is use your email address. As such, I highly recommended signing up with a throaway freemail account if you're concerned.

 

[awesome]

that's what i was saying. you don't even need to sign up for an account, just use a disposable email provider, lots of which can be found by googling that phrase.

 

[Tunch Khan]

You can bypass their required information steps by voluntarily joining the Facebook preclearence program and submitting your recent photographs, fingerprints, retina screen data and blood/tissue samples. This way you don't have to go through all of that personal information.