Facebook Top 8 Security Tips
Efforts by international companies that create mobile broadband technology expands the world wide web’s horizons, making online communities like Facebook today’s version of international inter-racial conferences and meets. Facebook represents the boom the Internet has been enjoying the last couple of years. However, with new opportunities come an equally high number of people trying to take advantage of it.
This article discusses some simple, easy to follow steps to increase your personal security on Facebook.
- Golden Rule – Assume that the personal information and photos you display are publicly available and now just available to specific friends.
- Strong Passwords – It may seem obvious but make sure you use a strong password for your account. Also, I’d suggest not using that password you use for everything else, you know what I’m talking about.
- Secure your birth date – Birth dates are often required to validate our identity. Under Profile, you can choose to not display your birthday or alternatively you can choose not to display your year of birth.
- Privacy Profile Settings – We suggest setting the Profile Privacy > Basic to “only me” for items: Education Info, Work Info and Profile Privacy > Contact Information to “no one” for items: Mobile Phone, Land Phone, Current Address, Email. You may want to display your website address for advertising.
- Privacy Application Settings – Each Facebook application has similar settings to those of the Privacy settings. New applications are being added everyday. Its difficult to define a set policy. However, we suggest you remove any unwanted applications and/or limit there settings as required.
- Privacy Search Settings – Depending on your use of Facebook, you may not want to be publicly visible or you may want to limit what information is available to all users (i.e. your picture, friend list etc). We recommend changing the search settings from “everyone” to “friends of friends”. You may also want to untick “view your friends list”.
- Privacy News Feed and Mini-Feed Settings – Control what stories about you get published to your profile and to your friends’ News Feeds. You may not want to display information such as joined groups etc. Although, I don’t know how much privacy this offers as friends can view your groups anyway.
- Joining Groups & Networks – be cautious when joining groups. All users of a group will be permitted to see your profile data. Although, there may be a setting somewhere that restricts this as I did find some accounts that I could not access.
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Comments
Speaking of security, on some sites (namely http://www.scrivel.com) when leaving a comment one’s IP address is displayed.
Is leaving a comment on their posts a bad thing because of this?
When entering a comment, it only asks your name, no email address, and when the comment is posted, there it is – your IP. Please give the lowdown on all the risks that leaving comments on their posts entails. Thanks.
cb, perhaps this is worth a short post, because its a very interesting point. It is normal for servers to log visitor IP addresses, but I don’t think the IP should be displayed publicly, especially with comments and feedback. Hopefully, I’ll comment further in a short post.
Thank you, DK, for getting back to me – I appreciate it! Writing a post on this would be marvelous! Just any light you could shed on it.
I’ve stopped commenting on that site since someone I know told me how stupid it was of me to have done that in the 1st place.
It’s too bad because I feel there are a LOT of talented, humorous writers on that site but that the general public isn’t leaving comments because of their IP addresses being displayed. Yes, some have software to disguise their IP through 1 or 2 levels, but other people don’t have this. Now, I’d like my comments to be erased because I feel so vulnerable to have that info sitting there ‘forever’ and a day, ya know – I’ll email them about it.
Thank you, Dk. I’ll get your RSS for when you write of this.
Update: X’s have been added to the numbers. The whole thing just pisses me off – real headache to try to go back and have it ‘cleaned’ up. My question – WHY was it the protocol to have it listed that way in the first place? There are writers on that site and I’ve even contacted one (via their listed email, not in comments) to see how they felt about that being done – no answer. I’m assuming they have their posts there for exposure only, not caring whether people comment, which is fine. So, concerning this… triple X’s are a very good thing; the more the better.
very helpful post. I’ve also create my own tips to secure facebook account.
maybe you forgot rule number zero:
0. don’t join.