1) Check Your Facebook Privacy Controls – By default, Facebook privacy controls still expose a lot of data. The first and foremost guide to Facebook safety is to change the privacy controls according to your needs and keep checking them often as Facebook is known to update its privacy terms and conditions without warning.
2) Don’t Write All Your Personal Information on Facebook – Facebook is a social networking site and not your job resume or CV, or your spouse to be who would love to know all your personal information. Controlling the amount of information you post on Facebook will keep you safe even if you don’t set your privacy controls.
3) Make Sure You Apply Privacy Controls on the Photos that You Post – Pictures are worth a thousand words and this will always hold true, be it Facebook or not. Anyone can get to know more about you and others close to you by studying the pictures that you have posted online.
4) Don’t Accept All Friend Requests – Only accept friend requests from people who you know. There have been thousands of cases of cyber-bullying and other scandals on Facebook because of accepting people you don’t know and getting close to them. Later they get to know you well and then start taking advantage of you.
5) Don’t Use Facebook Over an Un-Secure Wi-Fi Network – Using tools like firesheep, a person beside you can spy on you and your online activities and you wouldn’t even know. Wi-Fi networks tend to be weak and it is better to avoid using sites that do not have a secure connection (https sites provide secure connection). Facebook doesn’t have an https secure connection and if you are not careful enough, the person sitting beside you could easily view your activities or worse, steal your passwords or delete your account
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6) Malicious Links – Don’t Click Any Links That You Might Suspect – Sharing links is something that many people on Facebook do. So malicious links tend to spread fast and people click them and most of them don’t even realize that they just clicked a malicious link. It is only after their computer starts acting weird, they realize that their computer is infected. It is better to think twice before clicking any link.
7) Be Sure to Log Out of Your Facebook Account – Many people just forget to log out of their Facebook account. This is really dangerous. The Facebook safety tip for you here is to make sure that you log out of your Facebook account every time as you may never know who might use your computer and tamper with your account.
8) Use Strong Passwords and Keep Changing Passwords Often – Strong passwords like th1s1spass (this is pass with 1 replaced for i) will help you remember your passwords easily and make them tough to crack. It is recommended to have such passwords and also change them once every month or two to keep your account from getting hacked (if you are one of those who uses Facebook on different computers.)
9) Monitor Your Children – Kids who have just entered their teenage years may be unaware of the bad things about Facebook. As a parent it is up to you to monitor their online activities so that they do not become a victim of cyber-bullying.
10) Don’t Get Addicted to Facebook – With the tons of fun applications and features on Facebook, it is easy to get addicted. One should realize that the virtual world of Facebook is not everything and there is world outside which remains to be explored.
