October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month, so it’s a great time to reevaluate how you’re using social media and to be mindful of its potential risks.
You’ve probably used social media to check in with friends at your favorite restaurant, say bon voyage before heading out on vacation, or to share your birth date. What we love about social platforms, dishing out information about ourselves and our families, is precisely what makes it so dangerous.
Problem is, ordinary details about your life could be used maliciously by cyber thieves to hurt your personal finances. In this post I’ll tell you how to stay connected with family and friends on social media as safely as possible.
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Identify Theft and Social Media
As I mentioned, sharing personal information comes with risks. You can easily give away enough personal data on social media to compromise your privacy and even become vulnerable to identity theft.
Just by viewing your Facebook profile, a mediocre hacker can scrape data like your name, email address, phone number, friends’ profiles, and current location in a few minutes. Each social media site has a privacy policy, but you have to be proactive about how your account is set up and what information you share.
In this article I’ll focus on steps to update your Facebook security. If you’re active on other social sites, like Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat, LinkedIn, or Pinterest, check out this article for more privacy settings.
Use these seven tips to manage your Facebook account the right way:
Tip #1: Check your audience before posting on Facebook
Each time you create a Facebook post, see what your audience will be and adjust it as needed before hitting the “Post” button.
When you click in the status field where it says “What’s on your mind?” there’s a button with a drop-down menu just to the left of the “Post” button. That drop-down allows you to choose who sees your posts.
You can share posts with the public, which means anyone on or off Facebook. That’s the worst option because a cybercriminal could easily get potentially harmful data about you.
A better option is to share posts with your Facebook friends only. Or even to a custom audience that you create, such as your coworkers or friends who are not acquaintances.
If you don’t want the privacy of your posts to be set on a case-by-case basis, make it universal for your account. To update or double check your settings, click on the down arrow at the top right corner of your Facebook page, choose “Settings” and then “Privacy” on the left side bar.
There are 3 sections of the Privacy settings that you should make as secure as possible. For the section titled “Who can see my stuff?”, set it to “Friends” or to a custom subset of Friends that you create. As I mentioned, that makes it much more difficult for an identity thief to see your personal information.
See also: 6 Simple Tools to Protect Your Privacy and Prevent Identity Theft
When it comes to identity theft, no one can be 100% safe. However, you can make it really difficult for scammers to reach you in the first place.
Tip #2: Limit who can reach you on Facebook
When it comes to identity theft, no one can be 100% safe. However, you can make it really difficult for scammers to reach you in the first place.
The second section in the Privacy settings is called “Who can contact me?” You should also set it to “Friends” or “Friends of Friends.”
One of the ways cybercriminals get your data is by targeting you through requests or messages. Scammers create fake Facebook accounts just to friend potential victims.
Once you’re a friend, they can spam your timeline, tag you in posts, and send malicious messages. So never accept a request from anyone you don’t really know or click on links, even when they come from friends.
The third Privacy section is “Who can look me up?”. Set this to “Friends” so the public can’t find you in Facebook by searching an email address or phone number.
There’s also a part that asks if you want search engines outside of Facebook linking to your profile. Saying “no” prevents hackers or someone like a prospective employer from finding your Facebooks posts when they search your name in Google.
Tip #3: Clean up your Facebook profile
You can access your Facebook profile from the “About” navigation link below your cover photo. There are seven sections of personal information in your profile, such as “Places You’ve Lived” and “Contact and Basic Info.”
Review each part of your profile to make sure that none of the data is public and then select “Only Me” for certain information so no one can view it.
There’s another navigation link below your cover photo for “Friends.” Edit this section as well so you can control who sees your friends list and the people you follow. In the right hand corner click on the pen icon, select “Edit Privacy” and choose “Friends” or “Only Me” for both sections.
See also: Identity Theft and Your Wallet—7 Items to Purge Now
Tip #4: Don’t overshare, even to Facebook friends
Once you review and tighten up the security on your Facebook settings, be aware that you still shouldn’t share too much personal information with your Friends. I know that’s the fun part about social media.
Just remember that the private details of your life could still end up in the hands of cyber thieves and be used against you. Here are some types of information that you should keep off social media:
Your birthday
Having a baby
Going on vacation
Buying a home
Changing your address
Your hometown
Your high school
Your pet’s name
If you shared too much personal information in the past, review your Facebook Activity Log and make sure old posts are secure by changing the audience or just deleting them so they’re not visible to a cybercriminal.
While none of these bits of information seems too revealing by itself, when paired with other data, innocent facts could be used by a criminal to hack into your bank accounts, steal your identity or that of a child’s, and open new financial accounts in your name.
If you shared too much personal information in the past, review your Facebook Activity Log and make sure old posts are secure by changing the audience or just deleting them so they’re not visible to a cybercriminal.
See also: 6 Risky Situations When You Should Avoid Using a Debit Card
Tip #5: Manage your Facebook apps
Apps are third-party applications that have access to your Facebook profile. To see what’s connected to your account, click the down arrow at the top right of your page and go to “Settings” and then “Apps” on the left side bar.
On this page, Facebook says that “your name, profile picture, cover photo, gender, networks, username, and user ID are always publicly available, including to apps. Apps also have access to your friends list and any information you choose to make public."
That means the default setting for apps is not very safe. But you can edit each app’s privacy setting, by customizing who can see that you use the app and the data that the app can get from you.
As you review your apps, if you’re not sure what it is or why it’s in your Facebook account, delete it to make sure that it won’t compromise your safety.
Tip #6: Don’t let Facebook friends compromise you
Even if you’re doing a great job keeping personally identifying information off of Facebook, a Friend could unknowingly put you at risk. Let’s say a Friend tags you in a post showing that you’re away from home on vacation together.
While it might be fun to share your vacation pictures, remember that a thief who has your address and knows you’re out of town could easily raid your home or apartment. So wait until you’re back home to share those photos.
To stay in control of your own Facebook timeline, go back to “Settings” and review the “Timeline and Tagging” options on the left side bar. I strongly recommend enabling the feature that requires you to review tags on photos and posts before they publish to your timeline.
That’s the easiest way to make sure no one can attach your name to content or images you don’t approve that could show up in your Facebook timeline.
See also: When to Monitor, Freeze, or Put an Alert on Your Credit
Tip #7: Create an email account just for social media
If you’re like most people, a lot of your personal information and account passwords show up in your email. It’s the key to your digital life, which is why most cybercriminals want to hack your email.
Once a hacker has your email, they can set you phony phishing messages to entice you to click on a link that downloads malicious software or baits you to give up sensitive information. If a criminal uses Facebook to get your email, you could easily become a target.
One solution is to create an email account just for social media. That way, if your Facebook account is ever hacked the criminal won’t have access to the email address you use for sensitive tasks like online shopping and banking.
To sum up, you shouldn’t be afraid to use social media—if you use it the right way. Changing your settings to eliminate your public visibility and limit who can reach you and tag you on Facebook takes just a few minutes.
Be cautious about oversharing private details because they can be used against you. Remember that nothing on the Internet is truly private.
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