Facebook is probably the largest social network in the Internet today and a few hundred
million users around the world regularly post updates about themselves and share
information, some of it private, to friends and family. While it is fun and helpful to enhance
relationships wherever your Facebook friends may be around the world, users should be
aware that they are also exposing themselves to potential danger from identity thieves and
malicious individuals.
Certain information that can become publicly available on Facebook including your birthday,
address, and names of your family members and friends. Facebook has become a venue for
criminals to exploit naive users.
Users should remove birthdays, addresses, telephone numbers and the maiden names
of their mothers as these are information that are used by banks and other financial
institutions to verify your identity. Even if you have very strict privacy settings and have
limited access to this information to trusted friends, it is possible that one of their accounts
can be compromised and your information can become exposed. It is safer not to put such
information because it is very easy to compromise a Facebook account, especially if users
access their accounts on public computers.
You should also be careful when accessing any website at an Internet cafe because some
malicious operators intentionally put programs called key loggers which record all characters
you typed on the keyboard, thus revealing your account access details. Also, computer
viruses may contain code to gather accounts and passwords from Facebook and other
popular websites.
You should not trust immediately anyone who attempts to befriend you on Facebook
because a compromised account of someone you know may be used to gather information
about you.
Parents should watch closely what their kids are posting on Facebook as they could
potentially expose confidential family information. When going on vacation or long trips,
do not announce this on Facebook because ‘akyat-bahay’ gangs may be waiting for
such information before they collect your valuables at your house. While posting funny
pictures of your kids, family or friends on Facebook is entertaining, this can give the wrong
impression to other people like potential employers or schools.
While using Facebook is fun, we should be aware of the dangers malicious people can inflict
on us and make sure we do not expose confidential personal and family information while
we keep in touch with our friends and family. The next time you login to Facebook, go to
the Privacy options and update it to limit access to confidential information to as few people
as possible. Also, delete the information mentioned above to be surely safe. And be careful
of pictures or videos about yourself and others that you upload because once uploaded, it
would be very difficult to remove any copy that may be made by other users and posted
elsewhere.