How To Set Your Facebook Settings To Keep Your Profile Secure And Private
3 min readFacebook is the primary social network platform right now and you need make sure your account is secured properly and your profile is not wide open to the public. This post is a refresher for you to go in and review your settings. On the left side you will see the menu items, the details below are the settings in each setting you should review.
— Security And Login —
Enable Two-Factor Authentication – A must security setting in my opinion. This will make sure if your password is compromised the account will still be protected. With this enabled you will be prompted to use the Facebook Code Generator on a mobile device to enter a 6 digit code to login. This is not everytime, only on new, untrusted devices.
Setting Up Extra Security – I recommend turning these on, especially the first one. If an uncreognized device is detected you will get a mobile alert and/or email. This may be you if you are using a new computer/device, but you want to know if it’s not you. The second option is in case your account is locked out and helps you recover it.
— Privacy —
The Privacy menu options is where you set your profile to be able to be seen by the whole public or specific people.
Your Activity – This is the main setting on how your profile is viewed. If you have it set to Public, anyone can see everything. If you have it set to Friends, only those you are Friends with can see your profile details. The other options provide more granularity.
Under Your Activity the last sub-option Limit Past Posts will go back to your historical posts and change your past post settings.
How People Find And Contact You? This section is how people connect with you. These settings open or restrict who can find you and who can see contact list details.
— Timeline and Tagging —
You can set yourprivacy controls but others can tag you in things and your name and profile link can end up in other people’s timelines. This menu section restricts who can tag you in things and you can enable a review step to see who tagged you and approve or deny it before it’s posted.
— Blocking —
This menu option allows you to block people from seeing things only posed to Friends, block specific people, messages, app invites, apps and pages.
— Face Recognition —
Disable this creepy setting.
— Public Posts —
This menu option controls who can follow your profile and reply to any posts you make on public pages. I recommend setting it to Friends.
Summary
Facebook used to have a View As feature but it’s disbale at the time of this post. You can see your settings as the public does by logging out and accessing your profile or asking a non-Facebook friend to access it and see what is displayed.
If you want to stay on top of the latest security and privacy tips and news, check out my daily podcast, Security In Five the show can also be found in all the major music and radio services.
Be aware, be safe.
Binary Blogger has spent 20 years in the Information Security space currently providing security solutions and evangelism to clients. From early web application programming, system administration, senior management to enterprise consulting I provide practical security analysis and solutions to help companies and individuals figure out HOW to be secure every day.
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