Let’s face the truth. We all do have one of our embarrassing photos which we don’t want people to see on Facebook. It is really important to maintain our privacy on Facebook because recruiters, colleagues, and managers judge our professionalism through our social profiles. There are some Facebook security tips which we will be talking about here today. There are different ways you can customize your privacy in Facebook.
Check Your Facebook Profile as Public or as a Specific Person
Facebook offers the unique feature of viewing your own profile as ‘public’ or as a specific person.
For accessing this feature, you need to navigate to your profile. Click on the gear icon available at the top-right position and click ‘View As’ from the drop-down menu. It will display your profile as seen to the public.
Click on ‘View as Specific Person,’ and choose the name of one of your friends from the list in order to check out what content this specific person can access from your profile.
Create Different Friend Lists
Facebook offers an option to separate your friends into different Friend Lists. This way, you can customize the visibility of your posts. Different Friend Lists you can control the content you want to share with people.
For instance, you can put all your co-workers in a group called ‘work’. When you share a personal picture, you can block your ‘work’ friends from seeing it.
Alternatively, you can create a ‘family’ list. When sharing a family photo, you can select only your ‘family’ friends to see it.
You can create multiple lists and adjust who can view your content before sharing.
Opting Out of Social Ads
Facebook uses your interests, demographics, past behaviors, and other signals to deliver relevant advertising to you. The ads shown are personalized to every individual.
If you wish to opt out of the ad targeting, then you can navigate to:
Account settings >> Ads section >> Ads and Friends >> Edit >> No One (under Pair my social actions with ads for).
As I am writing this article, Facebook doesn’t allow any ad network or third-party apps to use the picture or name of a person, but they might allow in future.
To prevent ads that would be intrusive to your privacy, you can opt-out:
From the Ads section under ‘If we allow this in the future, show my information’ >> Third Party Sites.
Set Up For the Future Posts
Facebook gives the option to determine a group of friends who can see your future posts. You can navigate to: “Privacy>>Account Settings>>Who can see my future posts?” You can select the particular option from this section including Public, Friends, and Specific groups.
Privacy >> Account Settings >> “Who can see my future posts?”
You can select the particular option from this section including Public, Friends, and Specific groups.
Review the Posts in Which you Get Tagged
Facebook offers an opportunity to review the content in which you are tagged – before it appears on your Timeline for everyone to see.
It is a great feature for those whose friends tag them in a notorious way in the embarrassing links, photos, statuses or videos. You can change the settings by navigating to:
Account Settings >> Timeline and Tagging >> Who can add things to my timelines >> Enable >> Review Posts.
Create a Default List of Friends
We already asked you to create different lists of friends above. And here we will strongly recommend you to create a particular list of friends to whom you want to make your content visible. This way you can make your profile visible to limited people.
Also, Facebook offers an option for ‘Restricted’ visibility. This is the group from which you want to hide all your future posts from.
Restrict People From Viewing Your Posts
All your Facebook friends can see everything on your profile by default. But you can restrict people from viewing the content by navigating to:
Account Settings >> Timeline and Tagging >> Edit >> Who can see posts you’ve been tagged in on your timeline.
You can choose any of the options available including, Custom, Friends, Only Me, lists of friends or friends of friends.
Block People From Seeing Your Friends List
You can block people from seeing your followers and your friends’ list. You can edit this information through the Profile Setting options under the Privacy option. When you navigate to the Private Settings of your Facebook account, you will see Edit option under ‘Who can see your friend list.’
Privacy of the Photo Albums
You can even set the privacy of your photo albums or specific photos which you have uploaded on your Facebook profile. When you will open the Photos section on your profile, open Albums and you can see an icon which helps you in setting the privacy and same will be available for each photo as well.
Disable Website Instant Personalization
Some websites use your public Facebook account information for delivering a personal experience. This feature can be disabled through:
Account Settings >> Apps >> Instant Personalization >> Remove the checkmark (Enable instant personalization on partner websites).
Login Notifications
If you access your Facebook account from any unknown device, Facebook will alert you. If you set up the login notifications, you will receive an alert every time you log in to your account from an unknown device.
It is a way you can prevent unauthorized access to your account. Just navigate to:
Settings >> Security >> Login Notifications >> Edit >> Choose the option >> Save changes.
Sign Out of Facebook Remotely
Ever used your Facebook account through friend’s PC or someone’s smartphone and forgot to log out? If yes, then you can sign out remotely from the device. You just need to navigate to:
Account Settings >> Security >> Active Sessions >> End all Activity.
This will help you in logging out of your Facebook account remotely from all the devices where you have an active session. If you don’t need to end all the sessions, then you can log out from a particular device.
Block People
If someone is harassing you or bullying you over Facebook, then you can block them. When you block a person, he or she won’t be able to see your profile. You can find this feature under:
Account Settings >> Blocking >> Block Users
Alternatively, you can block the person by visiting their profile and clicking on three dots find right next to Message option.
How to Get Back Your Facebook Account, If Hacked
You can visit Facebook Help Center and get your Facebook account back if you have been hacked. You just need to follow the instructions where you will be asked to create a new password for your account.
I hope this blog post help you protect your privacy and feel more secure about sharing your content with the right people. Also, it’s important to remember that not everything shared on Facebook is true. Check here what Facebook have been doing to minimize fake news. Are there any more Facebook security tips that you know about? If yes, then you can share with us.
