FACEBOOK: How to protect yourelf (Part 4)

Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. Albert Einstein

This is the last in a series of posts relating to the safe use of FACEBOOK. The feedback has been tremendous. Many thanks to all. This post will be kept as short as possible. Read as I share my personal view of keeping things safe on FACEBOOK.

I hope I have convinced many of you that FACEBOOK is a GREAT! concept but comes with some baggage that many of us need to address if we want to keep ourselves safe from those that want to take advantage of any weaknesses that allows them to steal our identity or worse. Organized crime has been having a field day.

A casual glance at the profiles of my friends indicated many were allowing anyone to see their date of birth, home address, the email used to register with FACEBOOK, telephone number, Instant Messaging details, place of work etc....

In my personal profile, I haven't even entered my home address, telephone number, place of employment plus I hid the email I used to register with FACEBOOK from everyone but me.

After all, my friends and family already know where I live. If they don't, they can always send a private FACEBOOK message which appears nowhere but in my private email account.

FACEBOOK was designed to facilitate relationships with family and friends, old and new. I choose not to extend it beyond that, for all of the reasons i explained in my previous posts.

This is a great overview of just some of what you need to know about keeping safe and your privacy settings. If someone so young has learned to be so smart about this, why can't you?


NEXT WEEK: I can hardly wait!

FACEBOOK: How to protect yourself (Part 3)

"My feet ain't got nothing to do with my nickname, but when folks get it in their heads that a feller's got big feet, soon the feet start looking big." Satchel Paige

In our first two posts we touched on various safety issues related to using FACEBOOK. At the risk of repeating myself, I will say again that I love FACEBOOK for what it does best, keeping me connected with friends and family, many of whom I had lost contact with some time ago until FACEBOOK became a reality.

On our FACEBOOK home pages, if we click on Account, you will see an option to click on Privacy Settings. Too tough? Just click here, or better yet, right-click on open this on another tab or page. From there you will see various options that you can set to protect yourself from the various potential attacks that can affect you. Here are my privacy settings related to my contact information edited to exclude my email address.
Check out yours . Does it look like mine or does all of the options say "Everyone". If you have read the two previous posts then you probably have realized by now that it shouldn't. "Everyone" means everyone in the world. If you haven't read the previous two posts or if you want to review them, go here and then here.

In next weeks post, the last in the series, There will be an overview and I will show you more on how to change these and other settings. This will be of interest to Doctors, Teachers and anyone else who might want to keep their FACEBOOK page away from search engines etc.....

If you find this whole privacy issue daunting, don't want to give up FACEBOOK and feel you need help, companies like our own GEEKS UNLIMITED can help. (Tooting my own horn!, excuse the blatancy of it all :o) )

In the meantime, check out some of these related videos dealing with privacy settings. If you are having trouble sleeping, you might also want to read up on FACEBOOKS policy on Privacy by going here:

Here is a broad overview related to just some of the privacy settings:


Is it even legal (Looks Amusing but isn't, WARNING SOME MAY VIEW THIS AS X-RATED, I included this for effect):


Even the US president weighs in on the subject: