Facebook is a fantastic tool for keeping up with friends and family, but it’s also a massive, publicly accessible database of your personal life. While you might love sharing photos of your kids’ first day of school or your vacation address, cybercriminals are watching—and they love it even more than your Aunt Susan does.
Cybercriminals often scour social media profiles for private information that can be used to compromise your identity or guess your passwords. Your social media habits are unintentionally creating a goldmine of data for them.
It's time for a digital detox. You need to perform a periodic Facebook sweep to check your privacy settings and scrub your profile of any posts that provide unwanted information.
Why Your Posts Are Password Hints
Think about the classic security questions: What was your first pet’s name? What street did you grow up on? What is your mother’s maiden name?
Most of us have posted the answers to these questions over the years without thinking twice. A quick look through your profile can reveal:
- Your Birthday and Hometown: Often listed directly in your profile.
- Pet Names: A cute photo and caption naming your dog.
- High School Mascot or Graduation Year: Found in old status updates or profile details.
- The Street You Lived On: Pictures of your childhood home or check-ins at old addresses.
By gathering just a few of these scattered details, a determined attacker can bypass basic security questions or even crack weak passwords that use personal details.
Your Action Plan: Sweeping Your Profile
This isn't just a one-time fix; it’s a necessary, ongoing maintenance job. Dedicate an hour every few months to this task.
- Check Your Audience Settings: This is the most crucial step. Navigate to your Facebook Privacy Settings. Make sure the default audience for your posts is set to "Friends" or, better yet, "Only Me" for truly sensitive things. Stop sharing with "Public" unless it’s absolutely necessary.
- Audit Your Old Posts: Use the "Activity Log" feature to review your posts going back several years. Delete or restrict the audience for any posts that reveal too much:
- Pictures of your driver's license, mail, or house key.
- Specific dates of major life events (like an exact graduation date).
- Identifying details about your current work or location.
- Restrict Old Posts: Facebook has a feature that lets you retroactively change the audience of all your past public posts to "Friends." This is a fast, powerful way to lock down your history without deleting everything.
- Review the "About" Section: Be ruthless here. Do you really need to list your exact date of birth, current employer, and high school in a public forum? Remove any details that aren't essential for connecting with friends.
By being proactive and cleaning up your digital past, you make it exponentially harder for cybercriminals to compromise your identity. Make the Facebook sweep part of your security routine today!
