Facebook and Personal Safety

While a lot of people follow the security procedures that are suggested to them whenever they are doing online banking or making an online purchase, a lot of these same people will actually forego these same security procedures whenever they are on Facebook. Unfortunately, there are a lot of online thieves on Facebook and other such social networking sites who troll around looking for personal information that they can use to get a credit card in your name or to steal your entire identity. This doesn't mean that you have to forego using Facebook to communicate with your friends or establish business connections though. It just means that you have to take some steps to safeguard yourself while doing these things.

Profile Privacy

For your education and work information you should set your privacy setting to basic but you shouldn't let anyone view your mobile phone, land phone, current address or email.

Application Privacy

Keep an eye on your Facebook applications so that you can remove any of them that you don't want and make sure to limit any settings whenever necessary.

Search Privacy

Think about why you are on Facebook: for business or for entertainment. Depending upon your answer to this question, you may want to be publicly visible or you may want to limit the information that you have available. It is also important to consider how you want your search settings to be and you may also want to not let anyone see whom you are friends with.

Feeds Settings

Consider what stories about you are being published on your profile as well as on your friends' news feeds. You also may not want to show other people what groups you have joined.

Joining Groups and Networks

Whenever you join groups you need to be very careful because all of the users in a group will be able to see your profile data.

Passwords

You should always opt for a strong password instead of a simple one. This should be something that is different than what you use for your email and banking accounts.

Safeguard Your Birth Date

Since your birth date will be used to validate your identity, you should choose to not have it displayed. Another option is to not have your birth year displayed.

Conclusion

While most of us are trusting by nature, it is still important to take precautions to safeguard yourself online. After all, a trusted friend today may no longer be trusted tomorrow.