Adjust Facebook privacy settings to help protect your identity

Are you a Facebookie? If you do, most probably you spend quite a lot of time on Facebook, whether updating status, reading your friends’ news feeds, browsing photos, watching videos, checking out your favorite page or playing games developed by third party developers.  Most of us do not give a second thought before sign up for a Facebook account. Facebook is one of 10 America’s most trusted companies in privacy. It provides options to protect your privacy online, but it is up to the Facebookers to use it. However, there are some of us still ignorant of this.

As a consequence, there are still cases of identity thief and imposters on Facebook. For those who do not wish to have another account running using your name and photo without you knowing, it is the best to control what information others can see on your profile.

Just few steps and you can protect yourself and your information.

1)      Go to the “Settings” on the upper left of the screen.

2)      Mouse over, and you will see “Account Settings”, “Privacy Settings”, “Application Settings” and “Help”.

3)      Click on “Privacy Settings”. There are four areas, including:-

• Profile

Control who can see information on your profile page.

The “Basic” profile drop-down menu has four categories; “Everyone”, “My Network and Friends”, “Friends of Friends”, “Only Friends” and “Customize..”. “Everyone” refers to everyone can see your profile. “My Networks and Friends” selection allows all the people in your network to see your profile. “Friends of Friends” selection allows your friends’ friend to see your profile. Lastly, “Only Friends” only permit your friends to view your profile.

For example here, I limit my information and photos to be viewed by friends only.

• Search

Control who can search for you, what they can see, and how they can contact you.

The default setting of Facebook is to allow “Everyone” on Facebook to search for you. Facebook profile allows you to control your searchable web result. You can select which Facebook users can see your profile. Public search listing box below also allow you to create a public search listing for you and submit it for search engine indexing.

• News Feed and Wall

Control what Recent Activity is visible on your profile and in your friends’ home pages.

This setting allows you to control what your friends can see. For example, if you tick “Comment on a Photo”, the Highlights section (your right hand section at Profile page) will show that you have commented on a photo. Same apply with others.

• Applications

Control what information is available to applications you use on Facebook.

Once you click the “Application”, you will see “Overview” and “Settings” tabs. Read “Overview” and adjust the “Settings” accordingly.

These simple steps can save you from identity thief, and protect your information.

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