Facebook privacy settings | What the Tech?

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (WHAT THE TECH?) — If you’re on Facebook, you probably have a friend who had their account compromised as well as their information.

That is likely because of two Facebook privacy settings.

Do you have a friend whose Facebook account is always getting “hacked” or “cloned”? Or does it happen to you? Changing just two settings can protect your privacy and theirs.

Go to your Facebook settings, select Privacy, and then look for “How people find and contact you.”

There are a couple of options you’ll want to think about and perhaps change:

• Who can send you friend requests?

If it’s set to everyone, people with absolutely no connection to you can send a friend request. Even if you don’t accept, they’ll still be able to follow you. This means they’ll get updates on your posts, photos, and anything else you do on Facebook that’s “public.”

You can change that to “friends of friends.”

It doesn’t effectively keep people from finding you. If a friend befriends a hacker, your name will still show up on their friends list.

• Who can see your friends list?

Change that from “public”. You can choose “friends,” “specific friends,” or: Only me.

This protects the privacy of all of my friends by not sharing their information on my Facebook account.

This is generally how spammers and scammers keep scamming people. They befriend just one person, clone their account, and send all of their friend’s friend requests from the cloned account.

Besides, most of us have been on Facebook long enough that most of the people we consider close friends are already Facebook friends. Changing just these two settings protects your privacy and the privacy of your Facebook friends.

Facebook also has a “privacy checkup” in settings to help review all of your important privacy and security settings.

For more “What the Tech?” stories, click here.