Protecting Your Online Identity
Tips for Basic Privacy Settings and Tools for Facebook profiles
- Determine your audience.
To all the beginners of online social communication, it is to it is vital to choose who can see your post(s). Any form of shared media content and status updates uploaded onto any social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc… allows any users around the world to access your personal information, whenever and where ever. The best method to effectively protect and manage your account is to implement barriers to block unwanted intruders. Facebook has revised their privacy terms and conditions to protect their users. Below illustrates the newly revised privacy settings and tools for the user.
Above in the category “ Who can see my stuff”?. This is where the user can select which specific audience (Everyone, Friends of of Friends and Only Friends) that can access the shared content on the user’s timeline past or present.
2. Choose how you connect with the online global community.
The most important privacy setting lies within the category “ Who can look me up?”. In this category the user’s profile can be easily searched by their email, phone number (if provided) and or search engines beyond Facebook’s realm. This function is valuable to the user’s family or friends around the world but imposes a great threat by enabling access to anyone specifically imposers to steal their personal data (emails, birthday, phone number, education, workplace and hometown).
I recommend towards beginners to set their settings to only “ friends” because it provides a “secondary” barrier. Those who are already friends with the user can see who are the mutual friends as oppose to the user’s friend’s friend (third party).
3. Timeline and Tagging: Who and What has access to view the post(s).
Your Post(s): It is recommended to have a “Friends” setting over “Public”( Global) setting. The public setting enables anyone access, where as friends is closed off and limited to those who are within your friends list. Therefore, posts and pictures will only be available for your friends only. The public setting is only encouraged when targeting a large audience to generate attention for advertisements of social events such as: public opinion polls,charities, business events, and organizations.
Facebook also offers more options when sharing content, simply hover over to the “People” icon beside the “Post” located at the button of the draft post. A dropdown menu will appear and there is an option to “Custom” who specifically can see your post. Illustrated below is a screenshot of the Custom Privacy setting that provides sufficient security to the user’s post.
