Facebook and Security

Hi guys I’m writing a post after a long time (ok its not that long! about one month I guess). This time I thought of writing about the privacy settings of Facebook. People who are making accounts or rather creating Facebook profiles increase day by day, the numbers go up to 6 figures per day. This sometimes arouse concerns of the users whether their privacy is remained intact. Most of the time what happens is some crook uses someones profile picture to use it as the profile picture of a fake account. This has happens a lot and many people still suffer from those bitter experiences. Not only that but also, there are various kinds of blackmailing done through the Internet sometimes via the Facebook only. So the question is how can we change the privacy settings?
Now we are gonna talk about the real deal! but before going in to details you have to think about this a bit. Facebook changes its “face” time to time so the path to these settings changes. Therefore, the names may change but the settings will be the same. Lets start!

First you have to go to Accounts -> Privacy settings check the image below,

That will lead to a page like this,

In that page you can see 4 main topics, and out of those topics Sharing on Facebook uses the largest space.
First lets start with Basic Directory Information, to go to the settings page, click on the View Settings page and you’ll get a page like this,

The first topic is Search for me on Facebook. This is refers to the visibility of your profile by doing a Facebook search, and on the drop-down menu you can see,

Here you can change the visibility settings as you want and when you click on the customise menu item, you’ll get a window like this, which enables you to block certain people and change privacy further according to your convenience.

Lets get back to the second topic of the Basic directory settings and that is, Send me friend requests. By changing the drop-down menu assigned to this you can change the settings of the friends requests, who can send you and who cannot. Like wise, the same settings apply for Send me messages, See my friend list, See my education and work, See my current location and hometown, and finally See my interests and other Pages. The image which corresponds to Basic directory settings above is how I have used my privacy settings, therefore I recommend it as preferable because its your data, your information so you should limit the visibility of it, but anyway its your choice at the end of the day. 🙂 OK then lets get back to the next big topic!

Sharing on Facebook, to go to settings page you have to click on the Customise settings link and you’ll get a page like this;

Lets start with Things I share;

Here you can change the settings of your personal information, and the drop-down menu is as same as above. On the bottom of that list you can see a link called as Edit album privacy this refers to the photos you have uploaded. When you click on that link you’ll get a page like this;

And yet again you can change the settings as you wish but make sure you do 😀

Lets move down to Things others Share and Contact information. And again the same settings apply so now this should be easy to understand!

Now we are moving to the remaining Main topics. Those are Applications and Websites , Block lists and Controlling how you share, Lets start with Applications and Websites. When you click on the Edit your settings link,

These information plays another crucial role. I’m saying that because there were certain incidents, for an instance there are applications which analyze your information without your knowledge. Which can be harmful, and the worst part of this is, even though you don’t use any untrusted applications your friends might be using those without knowing, and through your friends profile that application can access your information. You can prevent that from happening by changing the privacy settings on applications and websites 🙂
Lets start with What you’re using here you can remove or turn off the platform applications to remove you have to click on the Remove link and you’ll get a window saying;

From that window you can remove all the unnecessary applications by just selecting it and clicking on the remove selected button. Now lets move to Games and application activity this has a drop-down menu like the previous settings and you just have to change the settings as you wish.

Lets move on to Information accessible through your friends when you click on the edit settings button you’ll get a window to select the information which you want to share with your friends applications,

This is the setting I explained earlier which can access your data through your friends’ applications. Therefore you should be careful about the information you share.

Then there is Instant personalisation which enables you to see relevant information about your friends the moment you arrive on select partner websites. This depends on the plugins which you use so if you don’t have any you don’t have to change anything (like in my case) but if you have any just click on the Edit settings button and change the settings. Finally we have Public search which takes us back to Basic directory settings as I have disabled public search I get a page like this.

Now lets move to the last main topic that is Block lists. When you click on the Edit your list link you’ll get a page as below,

Here you can block others from sending your requests, application invitations, and event invitations by just typing that person’s name.

Phew finally its done 🙂 i never thought it will be this long anyway.
I hope this helped you if so please put some comments on that, and also remember this is about your privacy so changing settings is up to you I’m just guiding you through the process.

To get further information on privacy settings visit Facebook Privacy guide

bye for now 😀

~~ Rusiru Boteju ~~