Recent news about the personal information of an astounding 50 million users and their friends, improperly obtained from Facebook by Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm, has been a world-wide wake up call. Alarmed at the amount of personal information Facebook has gathered and shared, a #DeleteFacebook movement was launched along with other criticisms. Facebook has not apologized for this scandal but rather is committing to a number of changes to prevent future abuses of user data. One might ponder why better systems weren’t already in place.
Facebook plans to introduce a new centralized system to control security and privacy settings to users globally over the coming weeks. This will replace the roughly 20 separate areas currently in place for changing these settings. The new page will allow you to control what personal information Facebook can have. This would include interests, political preferences etc. You’ll be able to download a file of data that Facebook has collected on you, for review. There will also be clarification around apps that connect with Facebook and what information those apps are permitted to gather.
If you’re not planning to join the movement to delete your Facebook account and data (which is apparently not that easy to do), we suggest visiting this URL: https://www.facebook.com/about/basics to learn how to better protect your Facebook privacy. This is an easy to follow, graphical guide on how to manage your Facebook privacy. Topics covered include:
- Choosing who can see photos and other Facebook posts
- Viewing what your profile looks like to someone else
- Whether other people can see your list of friends
- Who can see your reactions and comments on other people’s posts
- Who can see a photo you post when someone else is tagged in it
- How to stop someone who is bothering you
- How to customize your privacy settings
- Ways to further increase your account security
- How to control the ads you’re shown
Besides protecting Facebook data, you may also have concerns about protecting your corporate data from cyber security threats. If you would like to learn more about how to protect your data, whether stored on local Servers or in the cloud, please reach out to us.
