You are a private person and have recently
joined Facebook. You keep hearing news about Facebook giving out user data,
people getting fired for things they have said on Facebook and other scary
stuff. Though it is pretty simple to keep things private on Facebook, you have
to actively go and enable the settings. Facebook leaves it to you how much you
want to share and how much you want to keep private. Here is how you can
maximize your privacy and still have fun on Facebook.
Choose your friends
carefully
Do you really want to be
friends with someone who sat next to you twice in high school? Do you want your
boss and co-workers to see all your photos? If you are not in school (actually
not even then), your popularity is not determined by the number of Facebook friends you have. Stick to the people you
actually care about.
Control what you want to
share
Go over the privacy
options carefully one by one and select what you want everyone to know, and what
things you would like to keep among friends. Decide if you want your timeline
to be found on search engines, or keep it private. If you don’t set it to
private, when anyone searches your name on Google or some other search engine,
your profile along with your profile picture will come up. Potential employers
tend to run your name through Google, so choose carefully especially if you are
job hunting. Go over your activity log periodically and delete or unlike things
which you do not want to be linked to you. If you allow your friends to tag you
in photos, be careful about whom they share things with.
Ad settings and
Application Privacy
Facebook shows you ads
based on your browsing pattern. You can hide ads by hovering on the ‘X’ and
choosing from the drop-down menu. The ‘Instant Personalization’ setting allows
your information to be shared with other sites that you visit. The ‘Like’
button present on almost every site is something else to be aware of,
especially when browsing from a smartphone. Another thing to consider is
application privacy. You can set ‘Game and Application activity’ to friends
only and then uncheck all the information you don’t want to be accessed through
your friends. Otherwise, your friends could unknowingly be sharing your
information with the application and its developers every time they use the
app.
Always log out
Make it a practice to
log out every time and don’t choose auto log-in. Otherwise, you will
unwittingly be sharing your private data all over the web while browsing. Secure Me is a useful tool which
checks your posts, monitors all your friend’s activities and protects you from
viruses.
Securing your privacy on
Facebook is not that difficult, you just have to make it a priority and actually
check or uncheck boxes. It does not take that long, and you can have a safe and
enjoyable experience on Facebook without any nasty surprises.
Author Bio:
Danni Smith loves
Facebook as much as she loves writing about it. She creates articles and
tutorials to help others learn more about Facebook.