{"id":31698,"date":"2021-01-14T19:03:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-15T00:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tcn.tidbits.com\/?p=8195"},"modified":"2021-01-09T13:40:55","modified_gmt":"2021-01-09T18:40:55","slug":"take-a-few-minutes-to-lock-down-your-facebook-privacy-settings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.computeradvantage.us\/v3\/take-a-few-minutes-to-lock-down-your-facebook-privacy-settings\/","title":{"rendered":"Take a Few Minutes to Lock Down Your Facebook Privacy Settings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continuing our things of improved security in 2021, it’s a good time to check your privacy online. \u00a0Facebook continually makes news headlines for its numerous privacy and security problems. Most notable, of course, were the 50 million Facebook profiles gathered for Cambridge Analytica<\/a> for the 2016 election. Closer to home, the company pushed a VPN service in the Facebook iOS app that collected all your mobile data traffic for Facebook<\/a>. After pressure from Apple, Facebook pulled the VPN but reused it for the Facebook Research<\/a> program, which paid users as young as 13 for their data. Apple caused that to be shut down too.<\/p>\n

Facebook has also silently shared user data with other tech giants<\/a>, received confidential health data from other apps<\/a> without users\u2019 informed consent, and stored hundreds of millions of Facebook and Instagram passwords<\/a> in an unencrypted form, among much else. The criticisms of Facebook go on and on<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Because of this, many have encouraged Facebook users to delete their accounts. That even includes the billionaire co-founder of the WhatsApp messaging service<\/a>, which Facebook bought in 2014. If you\u2019re done with Facebook, you\u2019re welcome to deactivate or even delete your account. Facebook provides instructions<\/a> for both actions. Deactivating your account just makes you invisible on Facebook, whereas deleting your account may eventually (up to 3 months) result in most of the data being removed.<\/p>\n

Despite all these problems, Facebook can be useful. You Amy be reading this article from a FaceBook post 🙂 \u00a0It may be the only connection you have with certain friends or family members, and many informal groups use Facebook for meetup logistics. For many, losing access to Facebook could hurt real-world relationships and activities. Plus, lots of companies have Facebook pages, and taking those down might result in a loss of business from customers who would find out about the firm only through Facebook. What to do?<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re a business, the most sensible approach is to keep your Facebook page but avoid relying on it. Remember, Facebook is not your friend. Back in 2018, Facebook said it would be prioritizing posts from friends and family over public content<\/a>, which is a nice way of saying that Facebook is deprecating business-related posts. So make sure you have a Web site that you control, and make sure that customers can easily find it and contact you through it. It\u2019s also a good idea to offer customers multiple ways to contact you, particularly via email.<\/p>\n

On a personal level, there are two ways to think about privacy on Facebook: limiting the information you share with other people on Facebook and limiting the information that you\u2019re willing to provide to Facebook. If Facebook doesn\u2019t have data about you, it can\u2019t sell it to the highest bidder, let it be harvested by hackers, or use it in ways you might find creepy.<\/p>\n

Facebook\u2019s Privacy Checkup walks you through many of Facebook\u2019s privacy settings:<\/strong><\/p>\n