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Tips to protect your privacy on Facebook

by Kiersten Leone, Social Content Creator at MSM DesignZ. 

Facebook is all we are hearing about these days. Whether you feel good, bad, or indifferent about the whole Cambridge Data Scandal, it is definitely important to start taking your data protection more seriously. Now, we’re definitely not asking you to delete your Facebook because that would be crazy, but here are a few steps you can take to make sure you are protected.

Download Your Facebook Data

The first thing you can do is to download a copy of your Facebook Data. This can help you see what exactly has been collected about you in the past. You can do this by going to  Settings > Download a copy of your Facebook data > Download archive > Enter your password > Save to computer.

Assess Your Privacy Settings

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Next, you should go to your Facebook privacy settings and make sure all the options are how you want them to be. Facebook has a “ Privacy Checkup area” which is a step- by -step guide that will help lay out exactly what your current settings are, and allow you to change them accordingly.  In this section you can also see which third-party apps have access to your data. For example, any other websites or apps you have used your Facebook credentials to log in, so you didn’t have to create a brand new account, will have access to your data and be on this list. If there are some you no longer use, in the privacy checkup you can click “delete app.” If there are any you don’t want to delete, you can stop them from collecting your data. Do this by going to Settings > Apps >  Under “Apps, Websites, Plugins” click Edit. > Disable platform.

Disabling and Enabling Features

According to Social Driver, another privacy measure you can take is to disable your location services, so Facebook doesn’t have access to where you are. You can also disable and opt out of ads that are targeted to you based on your activity. Have you ever been online shopping and the next day that same shirt you were looking at is in your news feed? Yeah, here’s how to stop that. You can also add security with Two-Factor Authentication, which will prevent unauthorized access unless you confirm it through text or email.

Don’t Give Your Information to Anyone

More ways you can help protect yourself on Facebook is to stop giving away your phone number to strangers, companies, and social media platforms. Your phone number can open a large amount of data to miners and hackers. Another sneaky way companies and people are getting your personal data is through those “fun Facebook quizzes” all your friends are doing. In order to take the quiz you often have to agree to allow the creators of the quiz to access your Facebook data.
You may not think it’s a big deal for one little quiz, but once you click agree the creators of the quiz have access to your name, profile picture, age, sex, birthday, hometown, current city, IP address, your entire friend list, photos and everything you’ve ever liked on the site. Although it may be fun to see “how you’ll look in 50 years” or “what Disney character do you resemble most,” many of these quizzes are scams to steal you and your friends personal information as well as potentially link to viruses.
Although we wish it were as easy as just deleting your profiles or clearing your history and everything would be fine, it’s not. With the world’s dependence on social media and especially Facebook, it is not going anywhere. By taking these steps you can protect your Facebook information as well as keep your friends information safe too.
If you have questions or need assistance, contact us at MSM DesignZ, Inc.
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