Facebook is a platform that allows us to do many things. We’re always connected, after all, with shared statuses, posted photos, and videos, but how protected are we from potential intrusions into our privacy? The more connected we are, the more we need to protect ourselves from unpleasant events, such as stolen accounts, hacked profiles, and potential hacker attacks.
Cases of bullying , unfortunately, are commonplace, and victims can be anyone, from defenseless minors to women exposed to veritable media pillorying following hacker attacks in which personal photos and images are stolen . All of this, of course, is amplified by anonymity and the ability to hide behind a context that many consider unequal to real life.
Fortunately, however, Facebook is a platform that offers its daily users various tools to protect their accounts from potential hacker attacks. These are mostly recommendations that the platform itself provides its users to ensure their accounts are as secure as possible. But what exactly should you do to protect your account? Here are some important tips.
Always use your real name on Facebook
It may seem like a small thing, but using your real name on Facebook is actually very important. But why? The answer is very simple. If you use a nickname, your profile could be flagged as fake and consequently closed by Facebook. Moreover, using a fake name is against Facebook’s rules , and the process for reactivating a deactivated account requires you to enter your name along with a valid ID. Therefore, using your real name is a definite advantage.
Use the email address you use every day
To sign up for Facebook, you need your personal email address, which must be the one you check daily. This is important for your security because, should any suspicious situations arise , the Facebook team will send any communications to the address you provided when you signed up.
Choose your password carefully
Your password is crucial and highly sensitive because it’s the first thing that will be targeted in a potential hacker attack. While no password is truly secure, we can work to make it as complex as possible and therefore more difficult to crack . Your password should be at least 8 characters long and combine numbers and letters, including punctuation if possible. Also, try not to match your Facebook password with your email address password , for added security and to ensure that if your Facebook password is compromised, your email account is also at risk.
Link your mobile number to your Facebook account
This is a very simple and important step to secure your Facebook account. Two simple verification steps are all it takes to approve access . This means that even if your account were to be hacked, no one would be able to connect to it. The number, at your discretion, may or may not appear in the personal information on your personal profile.
Select your contacts carefully
Adding a contact on Facebook is easy, but adding friends you don’t really know can be quite risky . These people could somehow gain access to information that could be used to hack your account. If you really want to add a contact you don’t know to your friends list, you can select the Restrictions list , a sort of limbo in which the new contact can remain while you decide whether to accept the new contact into your friends list or block them permanently.
How to manage your Facebook data
Some of our personal data is inevitably present on Facebook. Depending on our settings, it’s up to us to make it visible or not. The general advice is to review all the information entered and carefully consider what to make visible and what to keep hidden . But how can you do this? Here are the steps to follow.
- Log in to Facebook, click on your photo, and go to your personal profile page. Then click on the “Update Information” option . You will then be directed to a page containing all your personal information from your profile: occupation, education, city of residence, and date of birth.
- To change any of this information, click “Edit” and use the drop-down menus to decide who , among your friends and other users, can view the published content . Content can be public if it’s an open board, or private if it’s closed. If you don’t want people outside of your circle of friends to read your content, it’s recommended to set privacy by closing the board.
- You can also hide your friend list . To do so, simply click the pencil icon above the box containing your friends’ photos. Then select the “Edit” option and set your choice; “Only me” to prevent others from viewing your friends list, or “Friends” to allow other users to see your friends.
- Another thorny issue, from a privacy standpoint, is the ability of other users to tag their contacts without their consent . To prevent this from happening, and to further protect your privacy, you can set an option in your settings that allows you to filter all photos in which you are tagged , so that they will be visible only to you and not published on your wall.
- If you want to remove your name from the initial search engine, click the gear icon and then “Account Settings.” This will take you to the Privacy section where you can change some options, including “Who can search for me?”
- One last but very important action you can take to further protect your account concerns notifications that alert you when someone logs in from another device . Access approval requires entering a security code.
Facebook Help Center
When signing up for Facebook, perhaps not everyone took the time to read the full rules, privacy policies, and frequently asked questions available to all users. However, the Facebook Help Center is a very useful service that helps you find the answers you need when you encounter something unclear or unfamiliar.
In particular, the “Privacy and Journal Profile” section contains a series of frequently asked questions for users who want to learn more about the topic. The “Account Management” section , on the other hand, will be very useful if you want to learn more about managing your password and how to keep your account as secure as possible.
Beware of hoaxes circulating on the internet
And speaking of privacy, you’ve probably noticed that every now and then a status is shared on Facebook that quickly goes viral, containing strange information about a certain privacy statement that every user is supposed to share. Well, this isn’t true and is a complete hoax, even though at least every year, this incorrect information always comes back to the forefront as a sort of catchphrase.
The message generally works just like a classic chain letter, with the added complication of creating a dangerous cycle of misinformation that claims many victims each time. Everything in this message is false, and in any case, simply posting such a status would certainly not be enough to protect one’s privacy from misuse of its content.
This type of warning is intended to prey on the less informed, the less experienced, in an attempt to convince them that by posting or sharing their status they can somehow protect their personal data. The truth, in this case, is different: if you don’t want Facebook to access your personal data, the only solution is to not sign up to this social media site, because there’s no alternative but to opt out.
