Your Facebook profile probably unites people from all layers of your life: personal life, past life, business life. So it is important to know what all those people are able to see.
Here are a few steps to make sure you still keep this lives separate:
Customize Who Can See What
To make sure you make public only the things you don’t need to be ashamed of and to people you can trust, follow these easy steps:
Leverage Facebook Lists
When adding to friends, categorize your new connection as family, college, friend, etc.
Adjust Privacy Settings
When all your friend are sorted into “lists”, you are ready to set your privacy:
Go Settings > Privacy Settings > Profile and customize which group can see what.
Customize option is where you can use your groups to be even more specific.
Alternatively, you can block one particular person:
Navigate: Setting > Privacy settings > Profile > “Basic” tab
Now, choose any item you want to block from someone and choose the same “Customize” option from the drop-down list.
Customize Album Privacy
Click the Photos tab on your profile page, go to Album Privacy. Use your Friend Lists to set the privacy for each photo album.
Get Control over Facebook Applications
Someone may find them entertaining and even strengthening the connections, I personally have no time for that.
Block all apps:
First, remove any applications you have added, and remove your permissions to all external applications that you may have used.
Then, go Settings > Privacy Settings > Applications > “Settings” tab
and select “Do not share any information about me through the Facebook API” (if you have removed all apps, this option should be active for you:
Block one particular app
If you keep receiving requests to opt into one particular app over and over again, you may want to block it. To do that you don’t need to block all apps. Just wait to be invited again and block it from your “Requests” (/reqs.php) page:
Control Your Wall Visibility
You can also set who can see what on your wall.
Go: Profile page > Privacy setting > News Feed and Wall and adjust which of your activities can be seen on your friends’ walls and your own wall.
Don’t Take Your Privacy Lightly!
We are getting used to our private information becoming public domain but it should not be that way! Identity theft is real. According to Aura, cases of identity theft and fraud have increased by over 45% in 2020 from 3.24M to 4.72M, garnering over $3.3B in losses.
This is huge!
You can (and should!) control what strangers know about you to lower your odds of becoming identity theft victim.