Seen here is our company Facebook page. Plus, our mini ping pong table & web developer Chase in the background.
Social networking website Facebook currently has 800 million users and Facebook executives are eager to hit the 1 billionth mark. This means that as more people join, security needs to be stronger than ever before. However, security measures are two-fold. On one hand, Facebook needs to do their best to prevent hackers from compromising the site, and on the other hand, it’s your responsibility to protect your personal information and privacy just as you would your home security. With all this in mind, I came across an excerpt from a book entitled, Web of Deceit: Misinformation and Manipulation in the Age of Social Media. This particular excerpt was written by Cynthia Hetherington and it outlines ten Facebook security tips. Among those tips are recommendations not to use a weak password, nor put your birthday in your profile. Your birthday is an ideal target for identity thieves who can use it to obtain more information about you, potentially gaining access to your bank or credit card accounts. I’d like to share 5 more tips -
1. Do not ignore Facebook’s privacy controls. Your Facebook profile can be customized. Do it. Limit access to only your friends, friends of friends, or only yourself. Do not enter contact information, such as your phone number and address. Restrict access to your photos, birth date, religious views, and family information, among other things. Give only certain people or groups of people access to items such as photos or block specific people from seeing them.
2. Do not post your child’s name in a photo caption. Don’t use a child’s name in photo tags or captions. If someone else does, delete the name’s tag by clicking on Remove Tag. If your child isn’t on Facebook and someone includes his or her name in a caption, ask that person to remove the name. Do not share the details of your child’s life online. Soccer practice is likely on a regular schedule, which can be easily tracked by a predator reading Facebook profiles.
3. Do not mention when you’ll be away from home. When you tell your friends through Facebook that you are not going to be home, you are inviting criminals trolling Facebook profiles-especially unsecured profiles-to your house.
4. Do not ignore your privacy settings. Facebook changes its Terms of Service regularly. You must check your profile by choosing the Privacy Settings on the pull-down menu item on the right-hand side of the screen. Alternately, go to www.facebook.com/edit profile.php after you have logged in to the site. Here you will see two buttons in the upper right hand corner, View My Profile and View As. This shows you what you have available for the general public to view. Once you see how much of your page is exposed, visit the privacy settings and fine tune your profile to share only as much as you are comfortable with. To stay on top of Facebook’s ever-changing privacy features, visit www.facebook.com/help/privacy often.
5. And do not friend your employer. Sure, it seems like a great idea to friend your boss; that is, until you decide to rant about how much you hate working overtime or you post photos of your day at the beach (um, the same day you called into work sick)!
