There has been a lot of talk about social media sites like Facebook and privacy over the past year. Although it seems a little silly to complain about a free service that is completely optional, Facebook has literally millions of users around the world. As we roll into the holiday season, most of us will be sharing pictures with family on social media sites. We will probably also be sharing status messages and notifications as well as making plans on our calendars. Most consumers will think twice about the information that they share, but social media sites like Facebook are a huge risk of identity theft if not properly secured.
Common sense dictates that you don’t share information about being out of town where everybody can read. If a criminal reads on your Facebook page that you are going to visit family in another town or in other state, they know you won’t be home. This is almost the same thing as advertising to robbers… we’re not home right now, come on in.
(And, by the way, keep in mind that it's not uncommon for it to be a family member who commits identity theft, so watch your personal information while you're visiting, too.)
It’s also a bad idea to share pictures that show the front of your house, especially if there’s a house number in the shot. It’s not too hard to locate Google Maps, or Google Earth, and match a picture to a location.
Recently, Facebook added a setting to allow you to work with a secure server. You can recognize this by looking in your address bar, and see if the first letters of the web site are HTTPS or HTTP. If they are HTTP, go into your settings and enables secure servers. Although this is not foolproof, this will put an added layer of protection on your login to your Facebook account, and every little bit seems to help.
Something else that has caused quite a stir is the new status update notification panel on Facebook. This is a little scrolling window on the right hand side of your home page, that tells you everything your friends are posting right now, as well as everything that is being posted on their pages. In fact, this cute little number showed up on one of my friends walls:
Dear Facebooker, we noticed how much you’d like to Facebook, so we decided to make Facebook even easier! We’ve added a mini Facebook bar to the site, so now you can Facebook even when you are Facebooking!
Yes most of my friends think this is kind of redundant. If it annoys you to think that perfect strangers can see what you are posting on your friends walls you can change the setting by going to your Privacy Settings, and change your Default Privacy to “Friends”. Be sure to save the options you’ve selected.
While you're in your privacy settings, it's also a good idea to look at who you're sharing your personal information with. Under the section "How You Connect" look for anything that is available to "Everyone". That setting should be used sparingly, and only after careful consideration. If "Everyone" can look you up by the personal information they already have about you, Facebook becomes a listing in the white pages, with far more information for them to go on. Consider limiting that type of information to "Friends" - people you have deliberately added to your friends list.
By taking a few simple precautions, it’s not too difficult to protect yourself by being on top of your Facebook account. It’s always a good idea to look over your security settings and privacy settings once a month, since it seems social media sites are adding new features constantly, and their default settings make it easier for their customers to find information out about their users.
Of course, the safest thing would be to unplug your computer and never log into any of them. But what fun would that be?
