Facebook is still in the news in relation to possible data breaches with Mark Zuckerberg meeting the EU parliament this week. Facebook is promising to make changes and to be fair they are making changes however it does not hurt to be aware how to keep your personal data private on Facebook. Although this will mostly be relevant to your personal Facebook account it does not hurt to review your business Facebook account. Tech-Wales has written a guide how to keep your personal data private.
The first thing you need to do to check what information is available to other people is by viewing your profile as if you were someone else. Go to your personal profile page and click on the three dots next to ‘view activity log’. If you see information and data you do not want to be online for people you don’t know you have some work to do. Tech-Wales will guide you through this process. Also have a look at how to download your Facebook data.
Protect your Facebook account from advertisers
Facebook is a free service and earns money through advertisement. Direct advertisement will look at your profile, activities and likes and will show you adverts based on this. To keep Facebook free advertisement is not a bad tghing however you might want to control the amount of personal information which is being used.
Go to ‘Settings’ select ‘Ads’. Then select ‘Ads based on your activity on Facebook Company Products that you see elsewhere’. This will enable you to switch this off to gain more privacy from advertisers. Also have a look at the other options on this page to check if these preference settings are correct.
Facebook Apps privacy settings
If you have liked a service or game on Facebook sometimes you will allow these apps permission to post on your Facebook profile but also to collect information about you. This can also happen when you use Facebook to log in to an external website.
Go to ‘Settings’ and click on ‘Apps and Websites’. By clicking ‘View and edit’ on each app you can review the settings and change them if required. For example always set the app visibility to ‘Only me’.
Do not add unknown persons as a friends
It has happened to all of us sometimes we get a friend request and do not know this person. Even though some people want as many friends as possible on Facebook we still advice you not to accept unknown people as your friends.
In your Facebook settings select ‘Privacy’ and edit ‘Who can send you friend requests’. This option is standard selected as ‘Everyone’ but we advice you to change this to ‘Friends of friends’. This way only people who are friends with your friends or family can send you friendship requests.
Hide your birthday and other personal info
Go to your profile page and select ‘About’ under your profile picture. Then select ‘Contact and basic info’ and hover over your birthday. This will show an edit link. Click this and besides being able to edit your birthday you will also be able to edit who can see your birthday via a drop down selection.
Blocking users on Facebook
Sometimes you do not want everyone to see your personal messages. You can block certain users on Facebook. Go to ‘Settings’ and select ‘Blocking’. Here you can block users, messages and app invites.
Hide your phone number and e-mail
If you do not want people you do not know being able to search for you using your e-mail or phone number change the settings to Friends. Go to your settings and select ‘Privacy’. This will give you the option who can look you up using e-mail and phone number.
Protecting your personal data and business data is important. Pleas have a look at our affordable IT consultancy services and our business cloud computing services. We make sure your IT infrastructure is set up safe. Please contact us on 01639 326001 to discuss your IT system.