2 Mins in Security Settings on Facebook to Safeguard from Strangers

Facebook Safety Tips

How can you check how much of your personal data is visible to outside world? Try these Steps.

1. Log out from your Facebook Account.
2. Try to Google or Facebook Search for your own Social Media Profile.
3. Click on the results & visit your own profile as an Anonymous user.

If the search results or anonymous visit reveals too much of your personal details then it is time to revisit the security settings on Facebook right now, before it is late. Restricting some of the personal data from anonymous users does not mean you are trying to hide from the World or Coward act, but it means you are wisely preventing unwanted problems. To know what I mean by ‘unwanted problems’, search for these terms “Identity Theft”, “Facebook Fraud”, “Facebook Kidnap” etc., which will give an idea on what details you have to keep secured.

Facebook Security Settings – Step 1

Enough threatening stories, let’s see how quickly one can get to the security settings. Search for a drop down icon at the right top corner of your Facebook Profile page or click this link https://www.facebook.com/settings

• In the left side panel of this page, there are many options listed as “General”, “Security”, “Privacy”, “Timeline and Tagging”, “Blocking” and it goes on.
• Click on “Privacy”. This is all where you can hide most of your profile updates from strangers.
  • Who can see your future posts?
  • Who can contact me?
  • Who can look me up?

By default it is all set to “Everyone”. It would be better to keep it as “Only me” for high level secured data, "Friends" or "Friends-of-Friends" for medium level and "Everyone"- if it is OK to visible to anyone. With this option you also block people from searching with your email ids or phone number.

Facebook Profile Settings – Step 2

We are now good with Timeline posts that we update. Let’s revise few more important settings. From your profile, click “Edit Profile” and then click “About” or replace your profile id in below link. https://www.facebook.com/<ProfileName>/about

• Here, you can see the “Contact and Basic information” which is more important. Hover mouse pointer of Phone number, Email and any detail that you want to edit. Now you can see the Edit (Pencil Icon) option appearing once the Mouse pointer is on the Phone number. Click Edit and choose who can see your Personal detail.
• Other Important categories that you might want to edit are “Work and Education”, “Places You’ve Lived”.

In the above steps, we have restricted who can see our personal details. But, these 2 steps are of no use, if we ignore the 3^rd step.

Clean Your Friends List - Unknown Profiles - Step 3

There is no setting available in any social media to remove unwanted or unknown Profiles from your Friends list. This has to done manually. Browse your friends list carefully and remove the profile that you have added accidentally. Also, do not approve friend requests from persons whom you have absolutely no idea who they are. Most of us have at least one profile stranger to you as your friend. Please don’t do that mistake, as it might lead you to unnecessary issues. Not only Facebook, in any Social media profile (Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn etc), visit your profile’s security settings at least once in a year and verify that everything is just fine and stay happy online. Also Read: Do you know you can Post to Facebook Timeline through Email?