Facebook Privacy: The New Facebook Identity Theft Prevention Guide

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June 2nd, 2010 - Posted by Kent

A lot has changed since we posted our original Facebook Identity Theft Protection Guide. But one thing that hasn't changed is the potential for identity thieves, cyber stalkers, marketers, and other unsavory types to learn about you on Facebook. Now, Facebook's new privacy settings are beginning to roll out to its users. What these changes will mean to you depends a lot on how much you like to share and how carefully you've maintained your privacy settings in the past. If you already locked down your settings, you may not have much to do, but you'll have a new way to manage them.

The settings in the following guide can be best described as reasonably cautious, but not obsessively paranoid. Before we get into what information sharing you can control, here's what you have to share: name, profile picture, and gender. Other things are up to you. What should you allow? While there's probably no answer that's right for everyone, we offer this blanket piece of advice: if any piece of data can be used as a security question on a website, limit its visibility. This can include family relationships, school affiliation, pet names, date of birth, make of car, etc.

But before we go much further, let's review the number one threat to your privacy on Facebook: You. More specifically, it's the choices you make. The people you friend, the apps you install, the settings you choose, the status updates you make, and most importantly: the password you choose. All the privacy settings in the world can't stop users from choosing bad passwords, falling for a phishing attempt, or clicking on a malicious link.

1. Choose Your Privacy Settings

Facebook has greatly simplified the privacy controls with three basic user categories: "Everyone," "Friends of Friends," and "Friends Only." Additionally there's a Facebook-recommended setting and, if you've tinkered with your privacy settings, you'll see that setting too. These categories are the core of Facebook privacy. "Everyone" means pretty much everyone, including, sometimes, other sites.

This is what Facebook recommends, but it may be too open for some (including us):

Facebook's Recommended Settings

Personally we like the more conservative "Friends Only" setting. Although this setting has a check mark that allows friends of your friends to see photos you've uploaded if your friend is tagged in it (i.e., if you took a picture of George at the Tasty-Freeze and tagged it as such then George's friend Gena would be able to see your photo, even if you're not friends with Gena). It's more private without this item checked, so to keep photos from folks you may not know, uncheck this box.

Facebook Friends Only Privacy Setting

2. Basic Directory Information

Now it's time to dig deeper. Facebook's page that explains the new privacy settings mentions that by default other information including hometown and interests, is visible by default to help friends and other people you have things in common with connect with you (a.k.a, networks). This is not controlled on the Privacy Settings page, but on a separate screen you access by clicking View settings at the top of the Choose Your Privacy Settings screen.

Set these limits to what you're comfortable with. You could set everything to "Friends only" but you'd cut down on the chances of old friends and co-workers finding you. Instead, set them based on how private you think that information is, or should be. Tip: never make your high school visible to "Everyone" if you've used "what's your high school mascot?" as a security question on another website. We do recommend setting stricter visibility limits on "See my friend list." Such information could help identity thieves to engage in a little social engineering or get information such as your mother's maiden name (if, you know, your mom is your friend).

Likewise with See my current city or hometown and See my interests and other pages. Do you really want everyone to know where you live? Publicly viewable information can help phishers and other social hackers target attacks specifically towards you.

Further Facebook Privacy Settings

This page has one other incredibly useful feature and you'll find it at the top right. Preview my profile will show you what your profile looks like to Everyone on Facebook. We recommend everyone do this. In fact, we think Facebook should make this the first thing you see when looking at your privacy settings.

Facebook Profile Preview

3. Applications, Games and Websites

Next you'll want to go back to the main privacy page and Edit your settings for using applications, games and websites. This link is on the bottom left. You'll then be brought to the page below:

You'll find one of the most useful tools at the top. What you're using allows you to turn off all applications or remove unwanted or "spammy applications," as Facebook puts it. You'll probably be surprised just how many applications you've said yes to. If you find ones that look suspicious or you simply don't want anymore, check them. Then click Remove Selected.

Facebook Application Control

But perhaps most important to your privacy, the thing that has a lot of people up-in-arms, is how your information is used by other sites and in Facebook apps. This is now controlled via the Info accessible through your friends link. It will bring up a pop-up window that you can use to control which of your information is available to applications, games and websites when your friends use them. If that sounds creepy to you, uncheck these items (or check away if you think this sounds like a good idea) and save your changes.

Facebook: Control your information on other sites

If you're not wild about the websites you visit knowing a lot about you, click the Instant personalization link and uncheck the box at the bottom. This prevents Facebook's select partner sites from accessing the information that you've set as visible to Everyone. According to Facebook, this personalization only currently works on Docs, Pandora, and Yelp. More sites will probably follow.

Facebook Instant Personalization

Lastly, you may want to disable Public search. This setting controls whether things you've specifically chosen to share with everyone (will) show up in searches on and off Facebook. If you haven't made much info made visible to Everyone, then you don't have a lot to worry about. Still, if someone Googles you, do you want your Facebook profile to show up? If it's a childhood friend, perhaps. If it's an identity thief, you might think otherwise. Our advice is to disable it, though really old friends or new thieves will find their way to Facebook to search for you anyway. There's a preview option here too, so you can see how your page would look to someone arriving at your profile from a search engine.

Choosing if your Facebook profile publically searchable

These are our best suggestions for using Facebook's new privacy settings. The promise from CEO Mark Zuckerburg is that these are stable, and any future Facebook changes will respect the settings you've chosen. He's also promised that Facebook users can expect privacy from Facebook's advertisers. While marketing is targeted, Facebook doesn't sell personal data to its advertisers.

Still, with all the data floating around out there, and the potential for identity thieves to socially engineer themselves into our lives, consider an identity theft protection service.