5 Facebook Privacy Settings you need to Know- Undoubtedly Facebook has become the most popular social website, having more than billions of users and many great features. Despite its demerits, people cannot resist themselves using this addictive website where they can socialize with their friends and family, find old friends and join thousands of pages to connect with their interests and get updates. Video calling and going live option has made this website more impressive lately. Irrespective of age and fraternity Facebook has achieved the honor of being the most browsed website.
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How Facebook Privacy Settings Works?
This interactive website has influenced our youth the most. People can’t even imagine their lives without Facebook and it has now become a part of their lives. It connects you to the world and let you know the information about your interest and you can also make new friends. However, it has a long and fascinating history that is one of the factors of its popularity but there is a dark side of this famous social networking site too, which are its privacy settings. When it comes to privacy we all are very concerned about it. Nobody wants to risk their privacy at any cost but there are five Facebook privacy settings that can substantially threaten your privacy which you may not know. In this article, we will provide you with a complete guide for those settings and will tell you how to improve your Facebook privacy.
How can Facebook be a Threat to Your Privacy?
Most of us are concerned about our personal information such as our photographs, status, or any other activity updates. In regard to this facebook has a default setting which enables your all posts to be public or in simple words, anyone who is not of your acquaintance can easily access it, like it or even comment on it and this all can be seen in your timeline unless you change this setting and limit the audience who can see your posts. It can also show your pictures or other personal stuff to the people who comment or like your post. This all can be very uncomfortable and insecure for the people who value their privacy and want to share their personal life only with the people they know. In addition to this, Facebook is becoming a cradle for scams day by day.
An In-depth Look
One needs to be alert while clicking any link provided by any stranger because it can leak your personal information and give that person access to your account. Facebook scams also include clickjacking, survey scams, and identity theft. Scams can add malicious JavaScript to your address bar that allows your device to install malware without your knowledge.
We all must keep ourselves aware of the fact that facebook gains profit from its advertisers, not users. Since advertisers want their message to reach to the bulk of people, Facebook shares your information with not only your friends but with other users too. Facebook has recently introduced a setting that is facial recognition technology which automatically recognizes your face in the picture uploaded by any of your friends and suggests them to tag you without your permission unless you change the setting.
How to set the Facebook Privacy Setting?
The greater the website, the more complex its privacy setting. Incontrovertibly, Facebook privacy control setting is too complex and ever-changing that results in serious privacy concerns of the users. People are often not aware of the facebook privacy settings that can threaten their security. Unknowingly these people share their personal stuff publically and feel insecure seeing everyone’s response to their personal content. This can put such people into severe trouble due to the lack of knowledge about the complex privacy setting provided by facebook.
To add fuels to the flames, Facebook games apps collect private information about the users that can make the users feel insecure. But fortunately, for every activity, you do on facebook there is a privacy setting by which you can customize the people whom you want to see your personal stuff. All you need to do is to understand how to set Facebook privacy settings.
Steps to Secure your Facebook Privacy
Following are the step by step guideline to make you understand better how to secure your facebook account.
- The most concerning privacy setting are to limit the audience of your post. For this purpose, facebook has provided a setting for organizing friends in various categories according to your preference. For instance, you upload a family picture and you don’t want your colleague to see that picture, all you need to do is to make groups of your friends as”family and friends” and “colleagues”. This allows you to select the desired group of your friends whom you want to show your picture.
- One more annoying thing is when you see overflowing friend requests every time you log into your account. You can get rid off all the unwanted friend requests by hiding your user account from facebook search. What you need to do is to go into privacy settings, click on Edit settings and change the default setting which is Everyone with Friends of friends or Friends depending on your preference. This will stop the people from searching you on facebook.
- Wall posts privacy is one of the many privacy settings that people should know about. If you want to put up a status which is concerned only with a specific lot of friends or if you have added certain friends to your account unwantedly like your boss or anyone from peers who reveals your personal stuff with other peers. Facebook gives you the power to control who can see your wall posts and you can block some people from your friend list whom you don’t trust and don’t want them to poke their nose in your affairs but at the same time, you are bound to keep them in your account as a courtesy.
- There is a facebook privacy option as “Instant personalization” which allows the online websites to access your Facebook profile information when you visit those websites. This can be annoying and most of you may not be aware of this setting. If you want to prevent your information to be shared with those online websites, you need to uncheck the setting “enable instant personalization” and be stress-free from leaking your personal information.
- There are many people who want their profiles to be searched neither on Facebook nor on any other public search engines like google, yahoo, etc. To prevent your profile from getting searched you need to hide your profile from public search engine by going into privacy setting and turning off this option.
How Can You Improve Your Privacy Settings on Facebook?
Besides all the above-mentioned privacy settings, there is a lot more Facebook privacy settings that can improve your privacy on Facebook and you can feel even more secure. First let us talk about your profile which should be your first concern as it contains all your basic personal information such as your email id, your birthday, hometown, education and other personal information that you must not like to appear on your timeline for all the public. You can fix this issue by changing the audience of all this information and choose only friends to see this information.
Know the Advanced Privacy Setting Options
With the advanced privacy setting options, you have a variety of options that can modify your setting and make your account more safe and secure. You can choose the audience for a timeline and you have complete control over who can tag you and who can see the posts you are tagged in. Facebook also provides you options for managing blockers. You can block people from messaging you, sending you requests, searching you on facebook and seeing your wall posts.
Facebook allows your friends who can see your personal stuff to bring it with them when using apps. You can tweak this setting and choose what you want to share and what you don’t. You can choose who can see your future post and can also review all the posts you are tagged in. For live video streaming the default setting is the same as you have chosen for your photos and other posts, but if you want to change the audience of your live video you can customize the audience you want to share with every time you go live. Lastly, Facebook Ads settings let you select the options to manage the preferences for showing you ads.
Conclusion
In short facebook privacy settings are very complicated and one must know at least all those settings that can be a threat to their security and private information. You should be sure of your settings before sharing your personal stuff and going Live on Facebook. But there are still some settings that can’t be altered, like the display picture of your profile is for public and there is no setting to hide it from the public. Thus, your display picture shows to everyone out there but you can tweak another privacy setting to improve the security of your account and use your account without fearing about privacy leak. I hope this article can be a nifty help for the people seeking guidelines for Facebook privacy settings.