Did you know that the default privacy and security settings in most social network websites are designed to share your personal information with as many people as possible? Did you ever stop to think about how valuable your information is to the company that runs your favorite social network website? The more information you share...the more valuable you are. Are you posting too much personal information and could this information be used for things you didn't approve of?
This guide gives you suggested "baseline" privacy and security settings that you can use when configuring your Facebook account. Obviously, you can adjust these settings based on the level of risk you are comfortable with. However, this guide should give you a good starting point. In addition, I have listed five key tips in the guide that you should keep in mind when using any social network.
Why put this guide together?
I have been doing several months of research with my own Facebook account as well as gathering the input of other Facebook users to determine what the privacy and security settings should be without loosing the key features of using a social network...the networking! I found that most users of Facebook have no idea that these settings even exist! Privacy and security settings can be easily configured to help limit the amount of personal information able to be shared with just about anyone, even outside your friends list.
Please feel free to distribute this document to friends and family or use it for any security awareness campaigns. I will hopefully be keeping up with any updates to the document when Facebook changes things. I might be putting together a similar document together for MySpace. However, MySpace has a long way to go compared with Facebook in regards to privacy and security settings.
Why put this guide together?
I have been doing several months of research with my own Facebook account as well as gathering the input of other Facebook users to determine what the privacy and security settings should be without loosing the key features of using a social network...the networking! I found that most users of Facebook have no idea that these settings even exist! Privacy and security settings can be easily configured to help limit the amount of personal information able to be shared with just about anyone, even outside your friends list.
Please feel free to distribute this document to friends and family or use it for any security awareness campaigns. I will hopefully be keeping up with any updates to the document when Facebook changes things. I might be putting together a similar document together for MySpace. However, MySpace has a long way to go compared with Facebook in regards to privacy and security settings.
You can download the latest version of the guide from my blog here.
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