In our Facebook-friendly society, it’s easy to assume that everyone is a potential friend.
We friend our friends, our neighbors, our friends of friends – even people that Facebook recommends to us – but as our friend list grows, it is easy to forgot that every one of those people has access to some pretty important personal information.
They Know Your Name
Your name is a core part of your identity. Facebook requires it for identification, but your name may also be stored on other websites that may identify your home address, your email address, or your age or criminal history. (Hopefully that last one doesn’t exist.) Anyone with an internet connection can find this info, if they search hard enough.
They Know your Birthday
If you choose to share your full birthday with your Facebook friends, they will know your birth date and age. If you use these dates in passwords or bank pin numbers, it gives mal-intenders an easier guess.
They Know your Family
Every bit of information you share about yourself, your family (birthdays, anniversaries, names), your struggles, your hobbies and favorite vacation spots – all of this data can be used by someone to build a profile about you. While it helps your true friends know you better, it also helps those who may intend you (or your loved ones) harm.
So how do you utilize social media without giving out your sensitive information? (Note: These are Facebook specific, aside from #1.)
1. Make your social media profiles private (Or at least hide all important details/posts from anyone who is not your “friend”.) Every platform has its own way to handle privacy, so do a google search for your specific platform or talk to your local tech-hero for help if you need it.
2. Choose your friends wisely
Feel bad about rejecting people who friend you but you don’t know? Facebook has a friend list for this. (It’s called “Acquaintances.”) Have some friends that you really want to share the details of your life with? Add them to the “Close Friends” list. Have some friends who you already on your friends list but are sending you a request from a “new” account? Reject these requests. (Or verify that they are legit – because often mal-intenders imitate existing friends with the hope of gaining your trust.)
3. Share important details with only “Close friends” or other lists of people you know well.
You can create friend lists for any occasion, but they’ll be rendered useless if you don’t use them properly. (Posting your life story to the “Public” profile kinda defeats the purpose.) In Facebook, you can select the “gear” symbol for each post to designate who you’d like to share with.
4. Remember: Nothing that you share is truly a secret.
If you post it, someone else can share it verbally, even if they don’t have the rights to “Share” it. Facebook has had some issues and accusations about the way it handles privacy, and it owns all of the information you share on its platform.
Keep these things in mind as you update your friends, and never be afraid to “defriend” someone if they start causing you problems. Your privacy is are more important that the number of “friends” in your friend column.