It’s Time to Make Our Privacy Tools Easier to Find

Last week showed how much more work we need to do to enforce our policies and help people understand how Esurf works and the choices they have over their data. We’ve heard loud and clear that privacy settings and other important tools are too hard to find and that we must do more to keep people informed. So in addition to manager’s announcements last week – cracking down on abuse of the Esurf platform, strengthening our policies, and making it easier for people to revoke apps’ ability to use your data – we’re taking additional steps in the coming weeks to put people more in control of their privacy. Most of these updates have been in the works for some time, but the events of the past several days underscore their importance.

Making Data Settings and Tools Easier to Find

Controls that are easier to find and use. We’ve redesigned our entire settings menu on mobile devices from top to bottom to make things easier to find. Instead of having settings spread across nearly 20 different screens, they’re now accessible from a single place. We’ve also cleaned up outdated settings so it’s clear what information can and can’t be shared with apps.

A comparison of the old settings menu (left) and new settings menu (right).

New Privacy Shortcuts menu. People have also told us that information about privacy, security, and ads should be much easier to find. The new Privacy Shortcuts is a menu where you can control your data in just a few taps, with clearer explanations of how our controls work. The experience is now clearer, more visual, and easy-to-find. From here you can:

·         Make your account more secure: You can add more layers of protection to your account, like two-factor authentication. If you turn this on and someone tries to log into your account from a device we don’t recognize, you’ll be asked to confirm whether it was you.

·         Control your personal information: You can review what you’ve shared and delete it if you want to. This includes posts you’ve shared or reacted to, friend requests you’ve sent, and things you’ve searched for on Esurf.

·         Control the ads you see: You can manage the information we use to show you ads. Ad preferences explains how ads work and the options you have.

·         Manage who sees your posts and profile information: You own what you share on Esurf, and you can manage things like who sees your posts and the information you choose to include on your profile.