How to Secure Your Facebook Privacy Settings
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg just sat through two days of questioning with the United States Congress. US Senators and Representatives fielded hours of questions to Founder and CEO Zuckerberg from everything from the Cambridge Analytica data breach to supposed conspiracy theories like the widespread belief that Facebook listens to conversations via a smartphone’s mic.
Important points to remember from Facebook’s two days on the Hill
- Mark Zuckerberg was not under oath – This is not to imply that anything was not truthful, but should he forget to misunderstand something about how Facebook operates, the repercussions are much different than lying under oath
- All Senators and Reps only had five minutes each to ask a question – this is not enough time to field some solid questions or handle any unexpected answer
- Zuckerberg largely turned all hot questions to Facebook mission statements
- No outside auditing firm was hired to examine Facebook practices
So what can you do to secure your personal data from Facebook. Although Facebook reiterated repeatedly that Facebook does not own data, and that the individual does, it surely doesn’t feel that way. Facebook users can take some steps to understand and even delete their data, but no one is sure if that’s even enough.
The European Union has the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) coming online on May 28, 2018 This law requires that all data collectors and aggregators make it simple for users to understand what data is collected and how it is used. GDPR law requires that users can easily opt out of having their data used and stored. Facebook is complying with GDPR, but only in the EU where it is required. SO why isn’t to the social media giant rolling out the tighter privacy regulations in the US too? Because they don’t want too! It’s that simple.
So here are a few changes you can make right now to to tighten up your Facebook privacy settings.
Checking on your own Facebook privacy settings is simple and only takes a short while when you know where to find the settings:
How to change your Facebook privacy settings
- Click at the top right of your Facebook profile
- Choose Settings
- Choose Privacy from the left menu
- Alternatively, go to this URL in a browser https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=privacy
- Determine which Facebook privacy settings you want to change. Who can see my stuff? Who can contact me? And Who can look me up? Are all options
NOTE: Consider limiting the visibility of posts to friends only and restrict those who can send me friend requests to “friends of friends.”
How to Turn Off Facebook Facial Recognition
Facebook Face Recognition, a form of facial recognition is rather invasive. Users can be tagged in videos when they are uploaded the social media channel, without the aid of the person posting the video. Previously only phots could be tagged. Tagged users are not necessarily aware of videos they were tagged in. Learn where to turn off Facebook’s facial recognition so you are not unknowingly tagged in other users’ videos! With one privacy setting change, Face Recognition can be turned off from the desktop app or the mobile app. From Facebook.com go to https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=facerec§ion=face_recognition On the mobile app, go to Account settings – >Face Recognition. Swipe the button to “off.”
Download a Copy of Your Facebook Profile to see what types of information and targeting is known about you.
To download a copy of your Facebook profile:
- Go to your Facebook home page
- Click settings in the top right corner
- Scroll download a copy of your Facebook Data
It takes a few minutes to download the data. You will get a notification when the download is ready. Facebook users will also receive an email to the associated account when the file is ready.And finally, if you still want to use Facebook, limit what data the app gathers about you. To protect your Privacy while using Facebook. A Firefox extension called Facebook Container can be downloaded from the official Mozilla website. Firefox users can still use Facebook, hut they will user it within the extensions container.
