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The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Privacy Settings

April 7, 2018 By Daniel Giordano Leave a Comment

In the information age, using Facebook can become a cause of concern for many people. Privacy is probably one of the most important aspects of Internet life today, as well.

Getting control of your privacy on your Facebook account doesn’t have to be impossible or complicated.

Once you know what you have to do to maintain your Facebook privacy settings, you will be able to monitor and control your data on Facebook and any apps that connect to your account.

Lately, it is proving necessary to prevent people from getting ahold of your information and using it maliciously or harvesting it to be resold. There are really only a few simple steps you have to take to get ahold of your Facebook account, and we have brought them together in this guide to Facebook Privacy Settings.

The Three Main Areas of Facebook Privacy Settings

There are three main areas that Facebook uses to control the privacy settings within the platform. All of the posts that you submit online, the apps that connect to Facebook, and your personal profile is all central to the privacy issues that you will find on Facebook. We’ll review these in our guide to Facebook privacy settings.

Here is a review of these below:

1. Posts

You can control all of the posts that you submit to Facebook. Especially those you share and place in your timeline. There are three significant settings for these posts you should be aware of. You can share these posts with the public, only your friends, or only you.

Depending on what you choose, your post will be available to the selected group only. You can also custom select friends of friends to allow the friends of your friends to view your post as well.

2. Apps

If you are using apps that are connected to your Facebook profile you may want to go to settings > apps and adjust who you want to be able to see your information when using the apps.

Information gathered through apps is under hot debate right now. Sometimes, third parties sell your information while they gather it through Facebook

You can control this by limiting who can view your information through the app, or in some cases, you may want to setup apps separately from Facebook to avoid the information issue.

3. Profile

You may want to limit or delete some of your personal information from your profile. Users can only view your profile if they are your friends if your privacy settings are set on friends only.

Advanced Guide to Facebook Privacy Settings You Should Know

There are several Facebook privacy settings that you should be aware of that can help you choose who you want to be able to see your information. In some cases, you can block certain individuals from either viewing your profile entirely or restrict their access to your information or posts.

In the interest of privacy, you should also prepare to monitor your logins and passcode for unwanted malicious entry.

Few Simple Steps to Prevent Facebook Hacking

It is quite common for hackers to get into the Facebook account and wreak havoc. You can prevent it by doing these few simple steps.

Blocking.

In the privacy settings there is a section about users that allows you to block individuals from viewing your profile or account entirely, and directly above it, there is a section that allows you to restrict the information that you post.

You can choose to either have the public be able to view that information in only some posts, and only friends are able to see it in others. You can also block invites, apps, and app invites.

Login Notification.

In some situations, others may try to access your Facebook account without your permission, illegally. Facebook allows you to set your login controls to notify you by email whenever your Facebook is logged in by an unknown browser.
Passcode.

In order to prevent people from getting into your Facebook account it is essential to have a good passcode, and furthermore to change it regularly, preferably every day if possible.

Learning how to create passcodes that are pretty much ironclad does not have to be that difficult; there are plenty of articles available online that teach you how to create complex, strong passcodes that you can remember easily.

What Daily Maintenance Steps You Need to Take

When you’re done adjusting your privacy settings to where you want them as far as posts, information your apps share with others, and your general profile, you will want to take daily action to prevent hackers or anyone else from accessing your information or gaining access to your Facebook account.

Prepare to Protect Your Privacy

Those who are ready to protect their privacy should set the login notification. It should notify them at their email address in the event of an unwanted login. They have learned the ability to create a strong passcode and change them on a daily basis.

All you have to do is to take care of your security and your privacy. Your privacy settings should monitor your email addresses for unwanted logins. You also need to change your passcode daily to prevent unwanted access.

These should be all the steps you need to take to maintain your privacy on Facebook.

What to help ensure the safety of your family and friends? Be sure to share this Guide to Facebook Privacy Settings!

USF Professor: Facebook May be Secretly Listening to your Phone Calls

June 4, 2016 By Brandi McCants Leave a Comment

With a billion people checking Facebook 14 times a day, the social media giant may find it hard to not listen to people’s conversations as to improve ad targeting like no other rival company can.

Prof. Kelli Burns, a social media specialist at the University of South Florida, believes that the Orwellian nightmare is unfurling just under our nose. Burns thinks that the company is now gathering intelligence for advertisement purposes. And she has evidence.

The professor noted that people are addicted to Facebook which makes the social networking giant’s work even easier. An average Facebook user doesn’t have an attention span longer than 2 seconds.

You can see people checking their notifications almost everywhere. But surprisingly, Facebook has access not only to what you post but also to what you listen, speak, or look at, the professor says.

“Anything that you’re doing on your phone, Facebook is watching,”

Burns said

And listening, according to the expert. It is enough to have the microphone enabled in your app’s settings to wave goodbye to privacy. The company itself said in a disclaimer that it accessed user microphone to learn what movies or music they watch or listen to.

But the situation is far creepier. Burns said that Facebook looks for some key words in your conversations to better target ads. Once one such word pops up, the app quietly places a related advertisement or story in your Facebook feed.

Burns agreed to test the theory in a recent interview. She enabled the microphone feature and initiated a random phone conversation. During the conversations she brought up her life-long wish of visiting Africa in a safari.

Less than a minute later, a story about an African safari appeared on her Facebook page randomly. Because she said that she would like to visit the continent in a jeep, a car ad also popped up.

While some may say it is a coincidence, other users have reported similar incidents. The USF expert cautioned that from the moment you agree to their terms and conditions anything can happen.

In response, Facebook dismissed the rumors by saying that it truly didn’t use its users’ microphones to target ads or tweak the News Feed. The site said that it only collected data from people’s posts and profile information for that purpose.

Image Source: Flickr

FBI Director James B. Comey Wants Americans to Let Them Spy on Them

October 17, 2014 By Lori David Leave a Comment

After former U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, said that smartphones are getting too hard to monitor, another shocking statement comes to our attention. FBI Director James B. Comey gave a speech where he pretty much said that Americans should let the FBI to spy on them, for their own safety.

FBI Director James B. Comey Wants You to Let Them Spy on Them

The FBI Director James B. Comey said in a speech yesterday that the adoption of advanced encryption technologies is going to stop law enforcement agents to collect precious information and evidence against criminals.

FBI Director James B. Comey doesn’t like the fact that Apple and Google are getting better at protecting their customers’ data and he wasn’t afraid to say so. Comey basically wants you to let the government spy on you, because that’s the smart thing to do. He went on to cite four cases in which access to laptops and smartphones proved vital to investigations.

Here is a part of his speech:

Those charged with protecting our people aren’t always able to access the evidence we need to prosecute crime and prevent terrorism even with lawful authority. We have the legal authority to intercept and access communications and information pursuant to court order, but we often lack the technical ability to do so.”

FBI Director James B. Comey believes that if we continue to encourage the strengthening of personal data encryption, then the law enforcement agents are going to have a harder time at doing their job.

In short, national security agencies and the US law enforcement want U.S. citizens to let them spy on them. What are your thoughts on this issue? Do you believe that we should allow the government to have access to our personal information?

Smartphones are Too Hard to Monitor, say U.S. Attorney General and Law Enforcement Officials

October 1, 2014 By David Crozier Leave a Comment

The iPhone 6 is winning over a lot of people, even China! We reported yesterday that China finally lifted the ban on iPhone 6 after Apple promised it would not release any personal data of their customers to foreign governments. Today, it appears that more people are concerned with smartphone monitoring, as the U.S. law enforcement officials and former U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, have complained that smartphones are becoming increasingly hard to monitor.

Former U.S. Attorney General Believes People Placing Themselves above the Law When Protecting their Privacy

We’ve heard how law enforcement officials were complaining that Apple’s new operating system, iOS 8, was too hard to break into and now the former US Attorney General, Eric Holder, said yesterday at a press release that officers should not be blocked from obtaining the information they need when they’re investigating a crime.

Google is getting ready for a new Android update that is going to have such a good data encryption, that only the users will be able to unlock it. Sounds pretty great, don’t you think? Not if you’re the government!

Former US Attorney General, Holder, released an official statement where he expressed his thoughts on the latest smartphone security and how not even officers with warrants would be able to have access to the smartphones.

It is fully possible to permit law enforcement to do its job while still adequately protecting personal privacy. […] What concerns me about this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law.

So, basically, former US Attorney General Eric Holder believes that someone’s privacy should not be placed above the law and that smartphone companies should put the government first and its customers second. What are your thoughts on this matter? Drop us a line in the comment section below, we would love to hear what you have to say about this.

U.S. Judge Warrants Microsoft to Submit Overseas Data

July 31, 2014 By Micheal Baptiste Leave a Comment

Privacy issues are in the headlights again. The numerous recent debates, scandals and legal matters concerning privacy are an indicator of the fact that now more than ever there is no consensus over what privacy means, how it should be handled and how far should we go to keep private things private. The fact that a U.S. judge warrants Microsoft to hand data stored in Ireland just serves as material to take the debate further.

The U.S administration proved that it cannot be a trusty partner, as Germany recently found out, because the NSA and CIA like to snoop into other countries internal affairs. It is not news, as U.S. intelligence services acted similarly for decades. After many years of collecting user data, corporations now own impressive data bases. This makes them eligible for data requests coming from public institutions. Just yesterday, Russian regulators filed a request to Apple and SAP for the two companies to reveal their software source codes. The Rusian government is concerned that spying tools might be hidden into the copyright protected software.

U.S. judge warrants Microsoft to submit foreign located data because the company controls it

Microsoft faces a somewhat surprising decision coming from a U.S. judge. U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska concluded that Microsoft must turn over a client’s account information, including emails. The data is stored in an Ireland-based server. So right now, information deposited in other countries is not safe from U.S. regulators. “It is a question of control, not a question of the location of that information,” Judge Preska said.

The procedure applies to banking institutions, who are obliged to hand over information on clients, even if the data is stored outside the U.S. So why should other companies managing private data not comply the same regulation? Data is ethereal, so it does not move from one place to another as other forms of capital. It does not influence the overseas countries social economic conditions, so it should not comply local regulations any more than the U.S ones in the case of U.S.-based companies.

Naturally, other tech companies support Microsoft in its warrant challenge. Among others, AT&T, Apple, Cisco, and Verizon filed court briefs to support this position. Reuters says the companies are worried they will lose money if investors are worried about the privacy of their data. It makes sense, because if a U.S. judge warrants Microsoft now, some of these companies might follow soon.

Russia Asks Source Codes from Apple, SAP

July 30, 2014 By David Crozier Leave a Comment

The Russian government wants Apple and Sap to hand over their source codes. The public administration is worried that software produced by the two companies might hide capabilities that could be used for spying. Nikolai Nikiforov, Russia’s Communication Minister, gave the example of Microsoft, who agreed to collaborate with the Russian government since 2003, when they agreed to share the Windows XP source code, so it is not the first time Russia asks source codes.

Nikolai Nikiforov met with Apple Apple’s general manager in Russia, Peter Engrob Nielsen and SAP’s managing director last week, according to Cultofmac. “Obviously, companies which disclose the source code of their programs are not hiding anything, but those who do not intend to establish cooperation with Russia on this issue may have undeclared capabilities in their products,” Nikiforov declared.

Russian lawmakers passed a bill recently requiring all the companies handling Russian citizen data to have servers on Russian soil.

Russia asks source codes from tech corporations as international political tension builds up

Right now Russia is in a very delicate position. The European Union and the United States are discussing future sanctions against Russia for its alleged role in the Ukrainian events. The United States already imposed sanctions hitting three Russian banks, Reuters says. Right now international politics are incredibly tense, with at least two open conflicts developing in Ukraine and Gaza.

Russia is not the only country with raised suspicions against software companies. Because of the latest security scandals, Germany, Brazil and China are some of the countries revising communication technology and practices. Russia’s move is bolder than the other concerned states. “Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 and U.S. intelligence services’ public statements about the strengthening of surveillance of Russia in 2014 have raised a serious question of trust in foreign software and hardware,” Nikiforov said on Tuesday night.

The problem is that both Apple and SAP use proprietary, instead of open-source software. Companies with this type of policy are sensitive to requests of revealing source codes because they rely their whole business model on patents and technological secrets.

But Russia, as many other countries, have good reasons to suspect proprietary software of potentially hiding spying tools. Because of how the U.S. regulators demand the software companies to design software encryption, backdoors for NSA to spy on users have been discovered. Russia asks source codes in a time when spying is easier, but more complex than ever.

Neither SAP, nor Apple offered any comments so far.

Blackberry Acquires Secusmart Communication Security Company

July 29, 2014 By Micheal Baptiste Leave a Comment

Blackberry was once the king of business mobile phone industry. In the last couple of years, Blackberry went through massive restructuration. After two years, the process comes to an end. John Chen, Blackberry CEO since November 2013, wants to put the company on a new track. Now that Blackberry acquires Secusmart, a new important direction is communication security. Secusmart is a “the leading expert in the development and implementation of comprehensive anti-eavesdropping solutions for German government agencies and organisations responsible for the provision of emergency services as well as governments and public authorities abroad”, according to their presentation.

Privacy concerns rose to unprecedented levels in the last couple of years. The Asange and Snowden affairs convinced governments to tighten up their communication security. In the age of big data, it does not matter so much anymore if the entity is a public or a private body, so corporations intend as well to protect themselves against eavesdropping.

Apple teamed up with IBM to offer iPads and iPhones to corporations seeking specific services and Blackberry attempts to maintain its position with the acquisition of Secusmart. We talked back in June about how Blackberry will now offer all Amazon apps.

Blackberry acquires Secusmart to offer security solutions to public and private bodies

Blackberry and Secusmart have been partners since 2009, but from now on Blackberry wants to have full control over the communication security development plans. Companies, as well as government agencies, are Secusmart clients. The German government wants even more of its members to use Blackberry devices. More than 3000 Ministery of Interior members already use Secusmart equipped Blackberry handsets, according to Ubergizmo. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, uses a Blackberry handset as well, but this did not stop the American foreign intelligence to tap it, causing a diplomatic scandal. Canadian government members use the company’s handsets too.

A phone with Secusmart installed costs 2000 euros, according to ValueWalk. The technology developed by Secusmart applies to mobile phones, as well to landlines, still widely used in the private and public sectors.

Chen says the company will start hire new people soon after the lay-offs will finish at the end of July. The company will hire new people at a slower reserved pace, to avoid past financial mistakes. Blackberry acquires Secusmart and it might be a first step in a new age of growth for the Canadian company.

Facebook Privacy Settings are Changing Again

April 9, 2014 By Lori David Leave a Comment

Facebook is a busy bee these days and it can’t seem to sit still, not even for a second. We’ve covered the news that Facebook bought Oculus and now it seems that Facebook privacy settings are changing again! In today’s article we’re going to try to sum up what those changes are, what they mean and how they affect us, the Facebook users.

Facebook Privacy Settings – It’s Complicated, It’s Always Been Complicated

Facebook and its privacy settings have a complicated relationship. Even more complicated than my next door neighbor and his two underage girlfriends that spend way too much time in his apartment.

Facebook has always been attacked by people who believed that its privacy settings were loose. Now, Facebook is going through yet another change that is mainly going to deal with how you’re sharing your content with the world.

Michael Novak, wants to make the Facebook privacy settings a matter not of control or mere settings, but a set of experiences that help people feel comfortable. While that may sounds promising, let’s take a look first at what is going to change before we form an opinion.

Facebook Privacy Settings – What Changes?

Firstly, you will get more specific audience selectors. Right now whenever you want to post something on Facebook you can choose between making your content public and sharing it with all your friends or specific friends. In the future, you will be able to share your content with Anyone on or off Facebook or your friends on Facebook. In short, Facebook is going to tell you in plain English what Public or Friends means.

Secondly, when you share something and then a friend re-shares your post on their own timeline, only your mutual friends will be able to see it. Facebook will use a special notification on posts in general that will explain how everything works.

Thirdly, and one of the most asked for changes, is the ability of making your old cover photos private. No more letting the whole world see your cover photos! You’ll be able to hide them and share them with whomever you want.

These Facebook privacy settings will roll out in the following weeks. What are your thoughts on them? Are you satisfied or do you think Facebook still has a long way to go when it comes to privacy settings?