Wednesday 21 March 2018

Always Use Protection

With the recent revelations about how your information can be used on FACEBOOK here are a 3 things you can do to protect yourself, your family and friends.





ONLY allow your friends to view your full profile. Change your settings now, seriously, this is the one thing you should always do. Apart from reducing unsolicited friend requests, it stops strangers stalking your page, stops strangers learning things about you and stops strangers commenting and copying things on or from your profile.

Go into the privacy check-up in the help centre menu and go through the 3 steps that are prompted.



  1. Only allow friends to view posts
  1. Delete out all those apps you have allowed access to your page (remember that quiz you took to find out your favourite animals and colours)
  2. Ensure ONLY your friends can see any personal details.

ONLY allow your friends to view your friend list.

Click on your friends, click the manage button as shown below:




And change the drop-downs to FRIENDS only.


This especially stops anyone viewing your profile, gathering information about your friends and then approaching you with a message like “OMG, can we be friends, I see you went to the same school as me with Joe Bloggs” etc...

When you have made your profile more secure, don't be accepting friend requests willy-nilly. Only accept them if you actually know then or if you actually have friends in common.




Also do regular purges of your friends list. I use the birthday reminder to help, when I get a notification and if I don't know who the person is without clicking into their profile they are toast.




Stop putting information on facebook divulging stuff about yourself.For example...

My first dog, Henry died yesterday and we are all heartbroken...



Hang on, a popular security question is “name your first pet”.

Look at this lovely picture of my little girl (Mary) first day at school, her teacher Miss Murphy is soooo nice

Wow, big mistake on so many levels...

a. There are any number of freeks out there that can use the photo (especially with geotag if you have it turned on) to find out where she goes to school (crest on jumper)

b. They now know her name, approx age,what she looks like (their type...ooohhhhh on so many levels) and could even approach her on the street.

“Hi Mary, I was talking to your mum the other day, she is so proud of you starting school and I'm so sorry Henry your dog died! My son is in your class and loves Miss Murphy, what do you think of her”

Getting the idea people!

Stop telling your life story and divulging your whereabouts. For example...

Advertising you are going on holidays (your house will be empty for 2 weeks)

Talking about your friends and family (allows stalkers to collection information about you and also those you love)


Anyway, that's just three things you can do. Have a private account. Protect you and your friends and don't be telling your life story on the internet.

John The Captain Ryan

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