Tuesday 4th February 2020 was Data Privacy Day, an occasion that should serve as a reminder to spend a few minutes going through your online accounts to ensure your information, or data, stays private. One of the largest hoarders of our personal data is, of course, Facebook. So lets take a look at some settings to take a second look at
1- Using a strong password and two-factor authentication
Securing your Facebook account doesn’t take much time, and is best done from a computer rather than your phone, since some of the settings can include a lot of information. Even if you’ve recently spent time securing your account, you should occasionally visit the Facebook Settings page and look things over once again. Odds are, new settings have been added, and older settings have been moved.
The first thing you should do to secure your Facebook account is to create a strong password and enable two-factor authentication This might seem obvious, but the importance can’t be overstated. You’ll also want to update your password from time to time, and make sure you’re not using the same one for crucial accounts like your banking app. Use a password manager to help create and, most importantly, remember your unique passwords (these are our top picks for best password manager). Go to the Security page and change your password.
Once you have a new password, turn on two-factor authentication. With 2FA enabled, you’ll need to enter your secure password and a randomly generated code whenever you sign in to your account. (You really should be using 2FA on every account and service that supports it.)
2- Go through Privacy Settings and Tools
Facebook has a dedicated Privacy section for your account. In this section, you can do things like set the default privacy setting for future posts, control who can send you friend requests and decide what information people can use to search for your account.
Go through the privacy settings and tools page and adjust each setting to your liking. I suggest setting your future posts to “Friends” and limiting the phone number and email address search options to “Friends” or “Only Me” to ensure that anyone with just a piece of your personal info can find your account.
3- Audit devices with access to your account
Over the years, we’ve all signed into our Facebook accounts on different phones, computers, tablets and various other devices. Facebook keeps a log of the devices that have access to your account, and makes it easy to revoke access to a rogue device or one you forgot to log out of.
View a list of all those devices under the Where You’re Logged In section of the Security and Login page. If you have several devices, click on See More to view the entire list. To remove a device from the list, click on the three-dot icon to the right of the device’s name and then Log Out. You’ll be asked whether or not you want all posts that came from that device to be removed from your account as well; a convenient feature should someone have gained access to your account and posted without your permission.
4- Don’t forget to look through apps with access
In that same vein, we’ve all granted countless apps access to our Facebook account. Over time, some apps are abandoned by developers and ultimately become a security risk. Should someone gain access to the app’s database of users, they could — in theory — gain access to some features of your Facebook account.
Visit the Apps and Websites page to view the Active apps that have access to your account. Click the checkbox next to any apps you want to remove, followed by the Remove button.
5- Enable your firewall anDisable Location History on your mobile phoned antivirus
Facebook uses its access to location data from your phone to create a map of your location history. You can delete your location history here, or if you’d rather Facebook not store your location history at all, you can turn off location history.
On an Android phone, open the Facebook app and then tap on the three-line icon. Under Settings & Privacy select Privacy Shortcuts followed by Manage your location settings on the Privacy card. Next, select Location History and make sure the switch is turned off
The process is similar on an iPhone. Open the Facebook app and tap on the three-line icon, then Settings & Privacy then select Privacy Shortcuts followed by Manage your location settings on the Privacy card. That’s where you’ll find the switch to turn off location history.
Source: MicroTek
