Facebook tip – Control your Notifications
Did you know you can control when Facebook sends you an e-mail notification? This can be helpful depending on how you use Facebook, how many friends you have and how often you log in.
1/8/2012: This information has changed since writing this post. I have explained the new Facebook e-mail notification settings here. The screenshots below are no longer accurate and some of the choices are different.
What are Notifications?
Notifications are messages that Facebook sends you when there has been some activity associated with your profile. The notifications are shown within Facebook, at the top of the page next to the Facebook logo. You’ll see a little red indicator, and then click it for the notification. These could be a friend request, inbox message or a general notification. This screenshot shows a Friend Request notification. 
E-mail notifications
In addition to the notification in Facebook, an e-mail will be sent to you, depending on your notification settings. For example you may be getting an e-mail every time someone sends a friend request, inbox message, or event invitation, tags a photo of you, comments on a photo, and the list goes on. If you have a large number of friends, you could be inundated with e-mail! On the other hand, if you are not a Facebook addict and you only log on occasionally, you may not know about any action on your profile unless you receive an e-mail. So in this case the e-mail notifications may be handy.
View and Change notification settings
To view your current settings – click “Account” over on the right side and then “Account Settings”. Click the Notifications tab. 
There are so many options that the page is split up into different sections, which you can navigate from the list on the right, starting with Facebook, Photos, Groups, Pages on down to Credits and Other Apps. Just put a check mark next to each item if you want to receive an e-mail notification. How do you know if you should? Well what I did was check every option at first. After about a week I had an idea of the amount of e-mail I would receive and then decided it was too much! So then I went back in and removed some of the selections. One item that I chose to deselect was “Comments after you in a photo”. This one generated a lot of e-mail when I commented on a friend’s photo, and then 25 more people commented on it after me. That’s 25 e-mails I didn’t need!
There are so many options that the page is split up into different sections, which you can navigate from the list on the right, starting with Facebook, Photos, Groups, Pages on down to Credits and Other Apps. Just put a check mark next to each item if you want to receive an e-mail notification. How do you know if you should? Well what I did was check every option at first. After about a week I had an idea of the amount of e-mail I would receive and then decided it was too much! So then I went back in and removed some of the selections. One item that I chose to deselect was “Comments after you in a photo”. This one generated a lot of e-mail when I commented on a friend’s photo, and then 25 more people commented on it after me. That’s 25 e-mails I didn’t need!SMS Notifications
For the true Facebook diehard you can have Facebook send notifications to your phone. To do so just click on the “Send notifications to your phone via SMS” option and follow the instructions. Then you’ll receive notifications via text when you’re on the go. I haven’t done this as I’m pretty much in front of a computer 24-7 as it is. That’s it! Review your notification settings from time to time, and you can keep the amount of e-mail from Facebook to your liking. For more information – visit Facebook’s help page on notifications.
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). Underneath there is a short form. Select your reason for deactivating. Check the box to opt out of Facebook e-mails.
AVG Family Safety is a free app for iPod touch, iPad and iPhone. It will automatically block websites categorized as pornography or malware. But you can also add websites to a block list. So if you want to block YouTube, just add it to the block list. Be sure to add both the full YouTube web address and the mobile version (m.youtube.com). There is also a tie-in with their AVG Family Safety service for your family computer. If you already use that service, then the app can connect and you’ll get more advanced filtering features.
K9 Web Web Protection is a free app for iPod touch, iPad and iPhone. It is also available for Android devices. It will block adult and potentially offensive or malicious sites. You can view the browsing history to see which sites were blocked (but note that your child could also view and then clear this history). The browser uses its own Safe Search capabilities. If you want to quickly block YouTube, this will do the trick.
McGruff Safe Guard is a free app for iPod touch, iPad and iPhone. It restricts websites by age range – either Child (1-12) or Teen (13-17). With a $1 upgrade you’ll get more features such as the ability to pick categories and sites to allow or deny. If your main goal is to block YouTube, you don’t need the upgrade as it is blocked for both the child and teen age ranges. I did find though that my child’s school website was blocked in the 1-12 range which was surprising. If I were to set this up on her device I’d definitely splurge and pay $1 for the full version.
Ranger Browser is a free app for iPod touch, iPad and iPhone. It is also available for Android devices. This app is a bit different from the others. You register on their website and set up an account with your child’s name. Then choose the level of content filtering per child – high, medium or low. You can, in theory, choose to block everything, and then just allow certain websites if you want to really limit things. However when I tried this, it did not work. If they could fix a few issues this app could be a good choice, but as-is I was able to view sites from search that should have been blocked.
