Social Privacy: Facebook

With any social network, online privacy settings are pivotal to keeping your online information safe. Whether you use Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn or Plaxo you need to regularly review what personal information you have entered into your profile as well as the privacy settings for this information. In this article, we will take a look at how to secure your information on the social networking site Facebook.

After setting up your account, you will want to do the following:
• Go to Settings -> Privacy Settings (at the top of the page next to where your name is displayed).
• Review each of the sections: Profile, Search, News Feed, and Wall for the level of access given and to whom.

You might find it surprising that Facebook considers your birthday part of "Basic Information" on the profile privacy settings rather than "Personal Information". It is important to note what information is in which category in your online profile and set your online privacy appropriately.

To further complicate the issue, there are also privacy settings you access by editing your online profile. A prime example is your birthday. By default, it is set to "show my full birthday in my profile". This means the month, date and year of your birth are visible to when your friends view your online information. Luckily, only friends can see this information but it still poses quite a risk for identity theft.

With any social networking site it is up to you to keep your online information private. Often the social network providers do not set the defaults of the online information they house to the most restrictive setting. Make sure to check your account privacy settings as well as your online profile information to ensure you have the appropriate online privacy settings.