98 OCTOBER 2019|COMPUTERSHOPPER|ISSUE 380
S
ocial media has the powertounite
people from all overthe world, and it
canbeaforcefor good. Butit’salso
used to collect ahuge amountofpersonal
data, which canbeused against youin
multiple ways.Thereare the morelegitimate
uses, such as sending youadverts based on
what youlike–which canstill be abreach of
privacy-and then thereare threats from
criminals, stealing privateinformation forID
theft or to help them hack into an account.
Cutting down on what yousharecan
massively help protect against criminals,
while settings in each social network will
help reducewhat dataiscollected about
youand which adverts yousee.
FACEBOOK
Facebook has nothad agood time
of late. First, it wasdiscoveredthat
540 million recordswerestolen from the
site, and then it wasrevealed that 87 million
people had their dataharvested by political
consultants. In both cases, the cause was
third-party apps leaking data.
Apps havetoask forpermission to run,
but it’snot alwaysclear what theycan
access. With the recordsused forpolitical
consultants, the app wasapersonality test
game, which asked forfull accountaccess
and then leaked the databack. Forthe 540
million leaked records, the datawas found
on webservers and had been uploaded by a
Mexican digital publisher,CulturaCollectiva.
Again, the information waslikely to come
from third-party apps, with the datataken
and then uploaded to insecureservers.
This all highlights agrowing problem
with social media in that your datadoesn’t
just stay on the network youwereusing but
canalso leak out to less secureplaces.
Facebook has sincerestricted app use to
preventfurther breaches, but youshould
still take steps to protect your account.
Boostyourprivacy
Start by locking down your sharing settings
to stop things that youpost online from
being publicly available, which means that
anyone on Facebook cansee what you’ve
posted, whether you’refriends or not.
The easiest waytoget started is with
Facebook on the web. Logintoyour account
and click the Help icon (the question mark in
the circle)and select PrivacyShortcuts, then
select See moreprivacysettings.
First, youcan choose who sees your next
post with the Choose audiencebox.You can
select from the options Public (everyone,
and notrecommended), Friends, Friends
except (you canblock certain people from
seeing your posts), Specific friends (those
youlist only)orOnly me (this one kind of
defeats the pointofsocial networks).
Select the option that best
suits you; anyofthe Friends
options areagood choice.
Nowclick Limit Past Posts to
restrict who canviewyour old
posts: these will all be updated
with the same sharing settings
that you’vejust created.
Under Howpeople canfind
and contact you, youcan change
the option forwho cansend you
friend requests. Friends of
friends is agood option, as it
means that youcan only be
contacted by someone that
knows someone youknow.
Change Who cansee your
friends list to Only me, to stop
people being able to see who
your contacts are. And select
No at the bottom of the page to
stop your profile appearing on
other search engines.
SOCIALMEDIA
By itsverynature, social media is all about sharing personal information,
but doyouknowhow much datayou’regiving away?
TOPSOCIALNETWORKINGTIPS
Don’t share personal information
thatcan be used against you, such as
your full date of birth, address, mother’s
maiden name and the like
Don’t add friends thatyou don’t
recognise, as thatcan give them
more access to your personal information
Don’t sign into other websites using
your Facebook account
Do check your privacy settings to
make sure thattheyhaven’t
been changed
Do turn off location tracking on your
accountunless you wantyour posts
to saywhere you were
Do turn on two-factor authentication
to make it harder forhackers to get
into your account
ABOVE:Stop apps fromviewing too manyprivate details via Facebook by restricting them
