Safety on Facebook [Guide for Beginners] Part 1

Facebook, the biggest social media platform with over 1 billion users all over the world. Some people love it some hate it but as long as you use it to communicate with others – it’s good to remember about some basic safety rules.
Facebook is constantly changing their privacy policy so it’s important to check privacy setting for new updates.

1. Start with a strong password

• make sure that your Facebook password is strong. Here is my previous post on how to create a strong password – How to Create a Strong Password
• don’t forget to update your password (e.g.: every other month)

2. Privacy settings shortcuts

Find the “lock” icon in the upper right corner of Facebook application. Those privacy shortcuts give you access to control: who can see your posts, who can send you private messages and block other users.

• Who can see my stuff? – means who can see your posts/pictures/videos/etc. on Facebook. By default might be set up as “Public”. You can choose between Friends/Only Me/Custom. I recommend to set it up for “Friends” – that means that all people who are your Facebook friends can see your future updates, pictures, etc. All people who are NOT your Facebook friends won’t be able to see that.
  The other option you should be aware of is what do other people see on my timeline? – you can use it to make sure (test) how others can see your Facebook profile.
• Who can contact me? – contains 2 features: whose messages do I want filtered into my inbox? (Basic Filtering or Strict Filtering). I recommend to choose “Strict Filtering” – means that mostly just friends can send you a private message.
  The second feature – who can send me friend requests?. You can choose between two options Everyone (everyone who can find you on Facebook can send you friend request) or friends of Friends (friends of your Facebook friends).
• How do I stop someone from bothering me?. If someone is sending you private messages and you don’t want to receive them you can use this option to block those users. By blocking someone you: unfriend that person (in case he/she is your Facebook friend), prevent them from starting conversations with you, stop them from seeing things you post on your timeline. In case you made a mistake you can always un-block someone.
• See more settings – you have the access to full list of privacy settings offered by Facebook

3. Activity Log

• access to everything you did and published on Facebook (updates, photos, Facebook Pages you “liked”, etc.) in a chronological order. This is one-by-one control center where you can edit things on post-by-post basis.
• you can edit who can see whatever you published in the past.
• you can edit who can interact with you.
• how it appears on your timeline.

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4. Who can search for you

• This feature controls how people can find you
• to have access to this feature go to “lock” icon and then click on see more settings, now you can see “who can look me up?”
• 1st option allows people to search for you using your email address or phone number (you had to provide Facebook with your email address but you don’t have to give your phone number) – you can choose between Everyone/Friends of Friends/Friends. “Friends” is the safest option because it limits who can find you based on these two criteria (email address and phone number)
• 2nd option – do you want other search engines to link to your timeline? – do you want Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. be able when someone types in your email address or your name to find your Facebook profile. This option is already off by default (make sure that the box is un-check).

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We all know that safety on Facebook is very important, people share a lot of content on the biggest social media platform. It’s good to make sure that you know what, how and who can view your content on Facebook, that’s why you should check the privacy settings.