App Trends Worry Users
New app trends on social media have raised our concerns once again regarding our privacy. We’ve learned to deal with issues related to location-based apps and more recently, AI (artificial intelligence) facial recognition apps. How do we maintain control of our privacy?
Social media is a daily ritual for millions of people around the world. Facebook is one of many popular platforms that enables us to stay in touch with friends and family, network with businesses or stay current with work and school companions. Facebook alone has more than 2 billion monthly active users. It has become the go-to place to post our photos, stories milestones, political views, and current affairs. Some of us even post where we are or what we had for lunch and dinner that day! In effect, we keep an online diary with some of our most cherished, private and personal details.
Public or Private?
The majority of users choose to edit their accounts by setting them to Private rather than keeping the default Public setting. By controlling who sees our posts, photos and personal information we expect that strangers would never have access to our information. But is this necessarily true?
Permissions for Apps
Quizzes, playing games or using facial recognition apps on Facebook allows for the apps to attach themselves to your account and gain access to your personal information. It’s very easy to unknowingly give a site, company or individual you don’t know permission to add an App.
These apps are most often the source of your spam, the reason for particular advertisements or worse, how someone is able to enter your account and gain full access your private information and photos, post onto your page and in Messenger as you.
If you use or have clicked on any of these sorts of links or Apps it’s definitely time to give your Facebook a good security scrubbing.
Change Your Password?
Whether or not our settings are set to private, we still have legitimate concerns about privacy issues and hacks. When we question the safety of our accounts, the advice we often receive is “change your password’. Unfortunately, that doesn’t usually resolve the issue. By using the tools provided by Facebook, it is possible to clean up your account and secure it for more extensive privacy.
Clean out your applications
We recommend you log into your account from a computer, not your phone. Although a phone is convenient, you may not be able to find all the valuable tools Facebook has to offer.
Facebook App Settings are found under General Settings. Open it up and take a look, you might be surprised at what you see!
Remove applications you are not familiar with or not using. In fact, it’s better if you remove all Apps except those for Facebook Business Page tools or games you trust and play.
After you’ve done this you should log out of your account and log back in. Recheck your Apps to ensure none of them have repopulated. If you discover an App repopulates no matter how many times you try to delete it, you will want to contact the creator. When you Google search the companies name you will also be able to find other users issues and complaints. Chances are you will find step by step instructions on how to delete that particular application.
See who else is using your Facebook account
In your settings tab, click "Security and Login". Log out of all devices other than the one you are using. The only device showing should be the one you’re currently on.
Public, private and friends only posts
To see what the public sees when they look at your profile, use the “View As” tool which can be found on your profile page, located under or near your cover photo. Keep in mind that you will not be able to edit your settings from that mode. You will want to take note and make your changes to each individual post, upload or photo.
On each post that you have made you will see a widget under your name. Click the widget or the three dots (...) to edit the privacy settings from Public to Friends Only, Friends Except (custom), or Only Me.
When you receive an email or notification from Facebook or any other social media platform you use, don’t ignore it. Information about updates such as security and safety settings and terms and conditions are important.