It pains me to admit this, but Facebook has become a necessary evil for me lately.

While I can’t stand the company’s privacy practices and don’t care much for my News Feed, I have enjoyed participating in a handful of groups, including two for newsletter creators and one for cord cutters. As such, I’ve been checking on Facebook's big blue app a little more often than I used to.

I've also been spending a lot of time inside Facebook's labyrinthine settings menu, looking for ways to make this experience more tolerable. Here are 11 quick changes I've made that help protect privacy, lock down profile access, and generally make the site feel less obnoxious. They're well-worth making if you consider Facebook to be a necessary evil yourself.

Most of the tweaks below reside inside Facebook’s main settings menu, so here’s a quick refresher on how to get there:

I’ll just refer to these menus as “Facebook Settings” from here on.

Turn off external notifications: Head to Facebook Settings > Notifications, and you’ll find a list of controls so granular that I can only assume Facebook wants to scare people away.

I'd suggest scrolling right past those settings to the “Where you’ll receive notifications" section. For both the Email and SMS options, select “Only about your account,” and you won't get any texts or emails about status updates, comments, and the like. Then, you can scroll back up and play with the options for in-app notifications (though I prefer to disable all those alerts in my phone's settings menu).

No more video nags: In a shameless attempt to juice its viewership numbers, Facebook puts a little dot above its video tab even when it has nothing important to share. To hide the dot, head to Settings > Shortcuts > Notification dots, then uncheck “Videos on Watch."

Customize the menu bar: Alternatively, you can hide videos and other unwanted tabs by heading to Facebook Settings > Shortcuts > Shortcut bar in the mobile app. Select "Pin" for the sections you care about and "Hide" for the ones you don't.

Disable autoplay: To further reduce video-related annoyances, turn off autoplay by heading to Facebook Settings > Media, then selecting "Never Autoplay Videos." On the web, head to Settings > Videos, then change "Auto-Play Videos" to "Off."

Stop creepy data collection: By default, Facebook collects all sorts of data from the apps you use, websites you visit, and businesses you patronize, all for ad-targeting purposes. If you've ever felt like Facebook is recording your real life conversations, this widespread tracking is probably why.

To stop it, head to the "Off-Facebook Activity" page (in the mobile app, you'll find this under Facebook Settings > Off-Facebook activity), then, follow these two steps:

You will be logged out of any websites where you use the "Sign in with Facebook" option, but I'd suggest using other sign-in methods anyway to further minimize what Facebook knows about you.

Disable autofill: If you tap on a web link in the Facebook app, it can collect any form data you enter—such as emails or addresses—for targeted ads. To disable this, head to Facebook Settings > Browser, then hit "Clear" at the top and uncheck the "Autofill" toggles underneath.

Delete your phone number: Facebook can use your phone number for targeted ads even if you only provided it for account security purposes. Assuming you've set up a different two-factor authentication method, consider deleting your number from Facebook by heading to Facebook Settings > Mobile, then selecting "Remove" under your number.

Restrict your posts: Want to prevent certain connections from seeing some of your posts? Here's my preferred method:

Clean up old posts: In Facebook Settings, hit "Privacy Checkup" at the top, then select "Who Can See What You Share." From here you can control who has access to your profile info and future posts, but you can also restrict old posts to just your friends with the "Limit past posts" function.

Don't do free marketing: To prevent friends from seeing that you've "liked" a brand in Facebook ads, head back to the "Privacy Checkup" section and select "Your ad preferences on Facebook." On the last page of this section, choose "Only me" from the drop-down.

Hide your status: To stop friends from seeing when you're active on Facebook, head to Settings > Active status, then uncheck "Show when you're active." Just note when this is disabled, you won't be able to see friends' statuses either.

While these settings tweaks won't make Facebook drastically more enjoyable to use, they do at least make it feel somewhat calmer and less privacy-invasive.

Did I miss any changes that you consider essential? Want me to look at another social network next? Just get in touch by replying to this email.

T-Mobile's creepy ad targeting: T-Mobile is officially rolling out a program that sells customers' web history and app download data to advertisers, after launching the program in beta last year.

As Gizmodo's Shoshana Wodinsky notes, the program doesn't involve selling customers' location data—the carriers all got a wrist-slap fine for that a couple of years ago—but there's nothing to stop advertisers from pulling in that data from elsewhere. And while T-Mobile says this data is anonymized, studies have shown that reversing this process isn't all that difficult.

The good news for iPhone users is that T-Mobile won't bother selling their data, as it's afraid of violating Apple's tougher privacy policies for app makers. Android users, however, will need to opt out. These instructions from CNet—for T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon alike—remain an invaluable resource.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro: Reviews are in for Apple's new 13-inch MacBook Pro, and while the ratings are respectable, they all struggle to explain why you'd buy one over the redesigned MacBook Air that arrives next month.

While both have the same M2 processor, the Air has a thinner and lighter design, a MagSafe charger (in addition to its dual USB-C ports), a superior 1080p webcam, better speakers, and a proper function row instead of the increasingly-obsolete Touch Bar. It's also $100 cheaper, starting at $1,119 with the same 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage.

The Pro does have 10 graphics cores instead of eight in the base price, and its 20-hour advertised battery beats the Air by two hours, but neither of those advantages should have much impact on real-world use. Between the new Air and last year's redesigned 14-inch MacBook Pro, the 13-inch Pro is in an awkward spot—as are the folks tasked with reviewing it. (Look here for a three-way spec comparison.)

This is more of a reminder than a tip, but I would implore you not to neglect your phone's panorama mode, which lets you take extra-wide photos of your surroundings. (This came up for me over the weekend, when I used panorama to capture a large circle of people swaying to "Piano Man" at a friend's wedding.)

On the iPhone, just swipe left until you reach the "Pano" option. On Android phones, either swipe over to panorama mode or find the "Modes" button with panorama mode inside.

Some tips to keep in mind while shooting panoramas:

The sounds of nature: Earth.fm is a relaxing little website for listening to nature sounds from around the world. Just click on a location on the interactive map, then hit the play button to start listening. It's completely free to use, and is also available in podcast form.

Now, if only someone would mash Earth.fm up with WindowSwap, we'd be in great shape.

With Amazon Prime Day coming up on July 12 and July 13, Amazon is offering a few ways to earn credit that you can use during the sale.

Most notably, you can earn a $10 "Stampcard" credit if you buy a Prime-eligible item, stream something on Prime Video, listen to a free Prime Music song, and borrow a free Prime e-book.

If you've never used Amazon Photos, you can also earn a $20 credit by installing the mobile app and setting up automatic backups. Amazon's also offering a $10 credit when you buy a $50 gift card, but only if you've never earned free gift card credit from Amazon before.

Other notable deals:

Just a quick note that next week's newsletter will be delayed until Wednesday, July 6, on account of the long weekend. We'll be back to the regular Tuesday schedule the week after that.

In the meantime, let me know if you have any questions or comments about anything you've read here.

Until next week,

Jared