The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
TIPS FOR PROTECTING YOUR SOCIAL DATA
Facebook’s privacy settings are in a state of flux right now given the fallout from Cambridge Analytica. As a company, Facebook is promising to offer users greater control over their privacy and to make the privacy setting tools more transparent and intuitive. David Ryan Polgar is founder of the All Tech Is Human initiative, which seeks to better align the business interests of tech with the human interests of users and society. Polgar, who lives in Connecticut but works primarily in New York City, is also a tech writer and speaker, along with co-host of“Funny as Tech”(a podcast and live panel show that tackles the thorniest issues in tech). Here are some steps he provides to better protect your privacy on Facebook:
1 Check your privacy settings often. Go to www. facebook.com/help and click on the Privacy and Safety tab. Download a copy of your Facebook data so you can see what advertisers might see.
2 Don’t use your Facebook sign-in to enter into other apps like Spotify or Amazon. When you connect an app to Facebook, you are often required to give that app permissions to view information about your profile. This happens any time you log in with Facebook on another site, ranging from shopping sites like Amazon to tools, music and media streaming services, quizzes, surveys and games.
3 Don’t do those apps that make you answer all sorts of questions about your personality, or face swapping apps, etc. They’re developing a psychological profile of you to better advertise to you.
1 Don’t join those memes where you’re sharing information like the street you grew up on, your first pet’s name, the city you grew up in, and the like — those are questions that often are answers to security questions for your bank and other important accounts. You’re giving away all sorts of personal information.
2 Use a different email for Facebook than you use for anything else. Don’t use your work or personal email. If you use one just for Facebook, it’s not connected to any other accounts, so it can’t be harvested to help log into anything else I use. It’s so easy to get a zillion throwaway email addresses — Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, etc. Just create a new one and make that the only email address you have connected to Facebook.
3 Don’t include personal information on your profile such as your address and birthday.
4 Think before you Like. Every time you “like” a product, service or public person on Facebook, you are helping advertisers understand who you are.
5 Do not think of Facebook just as Facebook.com, Messenger or your mobile app. Facebook owns popular apps Instagram and WhatsApp, which share a privacy policy under “Facebook Services.”
6 You are bound by Facebook’s terms of service, even though the vast majority of people click Accept without reading. You can read Facebook’s terms of service here: www.facebook.com/terms.php
7 Think of your privacy/data as a currency. No social media platform is“free.”You are paying for the service in exchange to access to your data.