More often than not, people on Facebook have done great mistakes by simply putting all out important/confidential information about themselves in their profiles. A lot of them on my list alone proudly wrote everything from their hometown, birthdates, schools etc. Little do they know the biggest risk they are about to encounter, thieves, hackers and criminals swarming and lurking around the internet waiting for that perfect timing to strike and victimize people.
If you read this post or happen to read an article on Yahoo, please forward it to people you care about. This might save them from trouble in the future.
Using a Weak Password
Avoid simple names or words you can find in a dictionary, even with numbers tacked on the end. Instead, mix upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols. A password should have at least eight characters.
-A combination of letters and numbers will be good enough as long as it is not a short single word that is predictable.
Leaving Your Full Birth Date in Your Profile
It's an ideal target for identity thieves, who could use it to obtain more information about you and potentially gain access to your bank or credit card account. If you've already entered a birth date, go to your profile page and click on the Info tab, then on Edit Information. Under the Basic Information section, choose to show only the month and day or no birthday at all.
- I helped my husband set up his FB account and one day he saw his birthdate was entered wrong and he corrected me with that, yeah I changed it to the correct year he was born(that was when he was watching me) but I changed it the following day for I thought displaying the whole thing could mean hassle and trouble someday. So now he's safe.
Overlooking Useful Privacy Controls
For almost everything in your Facebook profile, you can limit access to only your friends, friends of friends, or yourself. Restrict access to photos, birth date, religious views, and family information, among other things. You can give only certain people or groups access to items such as photos, or block particular people from seeing them. Consider leaving out contact info, such as phone number and address, since you probably don't want anyone to have access to that information anyway.
- I am pretty sure I have done it to mine and to my better half. I still have to check it for the second time though to make sure we are safe.
Posting Your Child's Name in a Caption
Don't use a child's name in photo tags or captions. If someone else does, delete it by clicking on Remove Tag. If your child isn't on Facebook and someone includes his or her name in a caption, ask that person to remove the name.
- Dang it! I always do it everytime I got photos to upload, my baby's name will be the caption of it.
Mentioning That You'll Be Away From Home
That's like putting a "no one's home" sign on your door. Wait until you get home to tell everyone how awesome your vacation was and be vague about the date of any trip.
- Kids beware for this one, you are hinting perverts/criminals to come into your home while your guardians are away. It could also be a warning to adults that love to let the world know how and what they're doing from time to time.
Letting Search Engines Find You
To help prevent strangers from accessing your page, go to the Search section of Facebook's privacy controls and select Only Friends for Facebook search results. Be sure the box for public search results isn't checked.
- It would be an advantage for people who blog as their means of exposing their page to the world as we all need traffic to our blogs. But your profile to be published in all eyes? That's another story.
Permitting Youngsters to Use Facebook Unsupervised
Facebook limits its members to ages 13 and over, but children younger than that do use it. If you have a young child or teenager on Facebook, the best way to provide oversight is to become one of their online friends. Use your e-mail address as the contact for their account so that you receive their notifications and monitor their activities. "What they think is nothing can actually be pretty serious," says Charles Pavelites, a supervisory special agent at the Internet Crime Complaint Center. For example, a child who posts the comment "Mom will be home soon, I need to do the dishes" every day at the same time is revealing too much about the parents' regular comings and goings.
Information lifted from YAHOO
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