Dushyanth Jyothi

When Facebook sets up a new account, it leaves default privacy settings very open in a way it like to have it. Several people never bothered to change these settings or only fiddle with few settings making themselves vulnerable to malware, spam, loads of commercial promotions, and most importantly handing personal information such as email address, location, likes etc, to unknowns without knowing. Here I will go though with all the Facebook settings, show how you can tighten up the screws for your own safety and privacy. By no means this would guarantee your Facebook experience safe, but at least makes the risk to minimal. Where I thought it is an important setting, I explained in detail (sorry for the boring explanation), also where I thought is an obvious recommendation, I made it to very precise without further explanation.

Here onwards, I call Facebook as FB

Lets go, Open:

Home > Account settings

Home > Account settings > General >

•  Email : I strongly recommend using your “secondary email address ” as “primary” email address in FB. What I mean is not using your main personal email address (your primary email) that you use to contact your family and real friends. You dont want your primary email address open to spam, possible hacking since it contains important conversations. I explain in more detail WHY you shouldn’t? Lets says, If you press “LIKE” button on one of your favourite brands FB page, say Starbucks, etc. It is very likely that you end up in receiving promotion emails from these companies, since either they know that you like them or they might have brought your details from FB. In any case, your primary email inbox is cluttered up with spam, promotions and may be potential malware. Another thing to realise is when you are using FB “apps” (applications) you are agreeing to give certain personal information to third parties, god knows how they use it. So, having your secondary email address as “primary” email address in FB allows all the junk not being caught up in your main email inbox, leaving it clean and hopefully risk free. Now HOW to change email address in FB? In case if you don’t have one, create a new email  address that acts as your secondary email. Add this to FB using “Add another email address” option. Now make secondary email address you just added as “primary” address by using “Choose Primary” option. Then remove your main email address completely from FB. FB only needs one email address. If you are worried about checking two emails in mobile/tablet, then the simplest solution is to “forward emails” automatically from secondary email account to your primary email. Forwarding Emails from one account to another is very simple, and almost all major mail providers offer this as free service.  If you are using google, you can find the instruction’s here: https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=10957.  This way you only need to check your primary email for all important mails and also FB notifications, etc. Further you can also setup “Filters” on secondary email address to configure which emails will forward to your primary email address. Now if you are also serious to keep secondary email inbox clean, then “UNLIKE” all the business pages and “REMOVE” apps. Also, check the bottom of this post for general email tips.

•   Password: Change frequently, use mix of: numbers (not birthdays, car numbers), CAPITAL letters, and special symbols(ex: _ ,*) in between

•   Networks : NONE

•  Linked accounts : NONE

Home > Account settings > Security >

• Secure browsing : ENABLE, This make sures you are accessing FB by a secure route.

• Login notifications : ENABLE, What this mean is whenever you login into FB, say from you personal computer, you should give a device name, like “Home”. If you login from work computer you probably would give a device name like “Work”. The important thing is whenever someone logged into your FB from other computer, FB asks to setup a device name, then sends an email to inform you that someone logged in from external computer. This make sures, if anyone ever hacked your FB details and tried logging in, you would get an automated email, so you can either close down FB or seek advice. You can check your existing devices by looking at “Recognised devices” option

• Login approvals: If you are really really serious about security, ENABLE.

• Active sessions: Here you can check your login sessions, when and from where you have logged in. Its a good practise to check this section time to time.

Home > Account settings > Notifications >

• I will leave up to you to change the settings of what you would like to be notified from FB

Home > Account settings > App >

• Apps are the primary culprits, I personally remove everything listed here.

Home > Account settings > Mobile >

• DON’T ADD YOUR PHONE NUMBER HERE

Home > Account settings > Payments

• Do you want to store your card details in FB? No way..

Home > Account settings > Facebook Adverts

• I hate them

 

Home > Privacy settings >

Home > Privacy settings > Control Your Default Privacy

• This is very important setting, here you can choose who can see your posts by default.
• NEVER EVER SELECT PUBLIC
• I recommend always using CUSTOM, where you can choose to share your content with specific group of people, say “Friends” only or “Friends of Friends” only or a mixed people of your choice.
• Here you can also block some of your friends from viewing your posts

Home > Privacy settings > How do you connect
Edit Settings >

Who can look up your profile by name or contact info?

• Not everyone obviously?? OR Friends/Friends of Friends

Who can send you friend requests?

• Everyone??? or Friends of Friends

Who can send you Facebook messages?

• Friends or Friends of Friends

Who can post on your Wall?

• Only Me

Who can see Wall posts by others on your profile?

• Only Me

Home > Privacy settings > How tags work
Edit Settings >

Profile review

• Off

Tag review

• Off

Maximum Profile visibility

• CUSTOM,  Only me

Tag suggestions

• Only me

Friends can check you into places:

• Do you really want to tell everyone where have you been??? Off, Otherwise

Home > Privacy settings > Apps and websites
This is very important setting
Apps you use:

• I would make it to None. Then MAKE SURE to “Turn off all platform apps”. Do you realise whenever you go to some websites, they already know who you are, allowing you to comment on their content using your FB details. This is because if you logged into FB, other websites can recognise you by checking FB details. So, turning off “all platform apps” make sures your identity is not provided to or visible to external websites, even though you are logged in FB.

How people bring your info to apps they use:

• UN SELECT all options

Instant personalisation

• Disable, if enabled

Public search

• You don want your FB account page ended up in google search, do you? Disable, if enabled

Home > Privacy settings > Limit the Audience for Past Posts

• Make sure to click “Limit Old Posts“, this will restrict all your previously posted public posts to “Friends” only.  Its a good practise to do this time to time.

Home > Privacy settings > Blocked people and apps

• Here you can add your friends to block lists

 

A note on Photos and Content:

• Every time you upload a photo, or content of type intellectual property on FB, you are granting a “non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to Facebook. ( Please see the terms: https://www.facebook.com/terms.php). So, try resist your appetite to post children, family, private and photos having other people (like group photos). There are number of ways you can share photos like uploading to Picasa,Flickr, or the good old way of sending an email with photos attached or link.

General Email Tips:

• If you keep on getting promotional emails, rather then tag them spam or delete every week, check the mail for “UNSUBSCRIBE” link, click and follow instructions to remove your email address for good from their database. Typical if you do this for a week, you will almost remove 80-90% subscriptions, promotional emails, leaving your inbox clean. By the way this only applies to promotional emails coming from known/trusted sources. If the subject is “You Won a Lottery” or “African Appeal” dont even open it, tag SPAM and DELETE . If you still like to receive promotional emails from some companies make sure to provide your secondary email address to them instead of your precious primary email address.

Always Browse Securely:

• Never use Internet Explorer, Why? dont ask me.

• I recommend Mozilla Firefox. Make sure to add “HTTPS Everywhere” add-on to firefox for secure browsing where possible. You can find the add-on here: https://www.eff.org/files/https-everywhere-latest.xpi. More details at https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

• Chrome is cool, but no secure browsing plug in available yet, otherwise recommended it.

 

I hope you find some of the tips useful. I also know that some may find my recommended settings Anti/UnSocial. Its better you decide what is social rather then Facebook does it for you

Please feel free to comment or add your own tips.

Have a safe and spam free Facebooking…..