Facebook is a popular social network service. The goal of social network services is to build online communities of Internet users who share interests, hobbies, or causes. Social network services have become significant tools used by Internet users all over the world.
Differently from communities in the real world, which usually provide safety and confidence to their members, online communities are not so safe due to the anonymity that exists in the cyber world.
One important aspect of online communication is the ability to choose how you want to present yourself in a specific situation. Online communication allows you to be open about who you are, be anonymous or make up a new persona. This aspect has a major affect on the authenticity of online communication and the safety of online communities. Cyber criminals exploit the fact that they can be anonymous on the Web to make a profit on the expense of unsuspecting Internet users.
Because of the popularity of social networks services and the significant amount of private information being exposed there they have become a major target for cyber criminals’ scams and frauds.
In order to fight cyber crime, Internet users must strive to secure their privacy.
It is important due to the fact that cyber criminals use each bite of information they can get on Internet users in order to help them in their scams. In social network services such as Facebook there is a lot of private information that cyber criminals can use. Many members of social network services expose private information on their profile under the assumption that they expose it only to a small group of selected friends. It is not always the case. As a safety measure it is best to set the social network service profile to be as private as it can be. Following are a few tips that can help you do that on Facebook.
Don’t let them find you
Facebook has a good rank in Google search engine. That means that anybody that conducts a simple search, which somehow connects with you, can find you. That means that you are also exposed to all kind of Web criminals.
So your first step should be removing your social network profile from public search listing.
- Click Settings and then click Privacy Settings.
- On the Privacy page click Search.
- In Privacy->Search page the default for Public Search Listing is to create a listing for your profile in search engines outside of Facebook. You should empty the following checkbox and click Save Changes.
Carefully manage your list of friends
Facebook makes it very easy to add friends to your network. Be careful of who you approve. There are web criminals who are counting on the fact that many Internet users approve friends to their social network without being sure if they know them or not.
In addition, because of the intuitive manner Facebook enables members to add friends, many Facebook users reach a point in time where their list of friends is so big they loose control over it. The best thing is to organize lists (a feature that exists on Facebook ) and manage your privacy settings by them. For Example, on the Settings->Privacy Setting -> Profile->Contact Information page you can choose specific lists of friends that can see your contact information by using the Customize option.
Also when sending messages you can choose to send only to specific lists and so on.
Manage your Privacy Settings
On the Privacy page you can control what information you share and with whom.
Facebook allows you to control every piece of your private information.
Click Settings and then click Privacy Settings.
Set up your Profile privacy settings
Click Profile.
On the Privacy->Profile page at the Basic tab you can control who gets to see your profile information by clicking on each dropdown and choosing the appropriate group. Never set it to Everyone.
Then click Save Changes.
On the Contact Information tab you can control who gets to see your contact information, such as email, mobile phone, address etc.
These are very personal details so it is recommended to set these dropdowns to Only Friends .
Actually the best thing is not to publish such personal details on your social network service.
Set up your Search privacy settings
On the Privacy-> Search page you can control who can search for you and how they can contact you.
On the Search Discovery dropdown you can control who can search for you on Facebook. It is recommended to limit this dropdown and not to leave it at Everyone.
On the Search Result Content tab you can control what people can see about you if you come up in their search results. It is recommended to limit the exposed information to minimum. Don’t give cyber criminals information they can use later on in order to scam you. Don’t expose your list of friends or pages you are a fan of.
The next tab is Public Search Listing – see the first topic.
After making changes press Save Changes.
Set up News feed and wall privacy settings
On the Privacy->News Feed and Wall page you can control what recent activity is visible on your profile and in your friends’ home page.
On the Actions within Facebook tab you can decide which activities you perform on Facebook will be written on your wall and on your friends’ Home Page.
On the Facebook Ads tab you can decide if to allow Facebook to present you as a fan of a page or social activity and to whom.
Set up Applications privacy settings
On Privacy->Applications page you can control what information is available to applications you use on Facebook.
There are a lot of cool and honest third party applications on Facebook, but there are also third party applications that turn out to be malware.
In order to work, third party applications need access to your profile, and sometimes to your friends’ profiles. If a friend of yours approves a third party application and allows it to access his/her profile information including friends’ information, you can be exposed without even knowing about it. So it is very important to limit the information that you allow to share with these applications.
On the Privacy->Applications->Settings tab you can choose if to share your information or not and what information you allow to share.
You can also go to the Applications page (click Applications on the foot bar) and control the privacy settings for each application separately.
Messages
Messages on Facebook can be innocent or can be spam or phishing messages. Be careful with messages from people you don’t know or with messages that appear suspicious. In any case never give up sensitive private information, such as passwords, bank account details, credit card details and so on in response to a message. It is probably a phishing scam.
Links
Be careful not to click on direct links send to you by people you don’t know in messages or wall posts. It could be a link to fake login website designed to steal private information or a link to a website containing malware.
Communities
You can join a community on Facebook and immediately gain a bunch of friends. Be aware that there are fraud communities, which designed to make a profit out of scams. Make sure that the community you join is a legitimate one.
