Protect Yourself from Facebook Identity Thieves

We've been hearing a lot about Facebook identity thieves, social networking, privacy and personal information lately especially in light of Facebook’s recent decision to strengthen its privacy policies after the Canadian government found that Facebook’s prevailing privacy policies were  inadequate.

The thing is – Facebook, when configured and used properly, can be a lot safer than it is the way that most of us use it. Here’s a few simple steps which, when followed religiously, can help to deter identity thieves. 

Know Your Friends

This one should be a no-brainer. Don’t accept friend invitations from people that you don’t know – you’ve got to ask yourself why someone you don’t know would want to be friends with you anyway. Whether they’re Facebook identity thieves or not, it’s clear that they want access to your personal information – otherwise they wouldn’t have added you as a friend in the first place. 

Know Your Applications

Facebook applications, as they’re currently configured, have access to a huge amount of personal information more than they should have, according to the Canadian government. Before you install a Facebook application, make sure it’s got a large user base and consider searching for it on Google to see if any users have made any complaints about it. Watch out for Facebook applications that are very new – Facebook identify thieves have been using applications more and more recently to get at users personal information.

Vet Your New Friends

Just because someone has a name you recognize doesn’t mean that they’re actually who they say they are. One strategy that Facebook identity thieves have been using more and more in recent weeks is to create fake accounts for real people, and then add their friends. Most people will accept an invitation from a name they recognize – say, someone from their graduating high school class, for example. Be wary of people you think you know if they don’t have a profile picture, and make sure you check their profile before you add them – if it’s not particularly complete, don’t accept the invitation right away. Keep track of them (receiving a Facebook invitation from someone allows you to view their profile for a limited time) and see if they’re actively engaging their other new friends. 

Limit Your Information with Customized Privacy Settings 

Facebook’s privacy settings are actually quite powerful, once you lift the hood off of them. Protect yourself from Facebook identity thieves by creating lists of your Facebook friends and limiting access to personal, identifiable information like address, telephone number, birth date, and so on – one simple strategy is to create one list of people you’re not sure about, and another list of people you are sure about. As you become “sure” about your Facebook friends, move them from one list to the other.

Don’t Post Personal Information in Your Status Updates

 “Hey, I just lost my phone, new number is 003-54585” – sounds like a great way to give your friends you new number, but in fact, if you’ve enabled Facebook’s “global” status updates settings, which let you broadcast your Facebook status updates like Twitter updates, to the entire social network, you’re making yourself a target for Facebook identity thieves. If you’ve followed the previous step and created lists for privacy settings, keep in mind that status updates might end up in front of some of the people you’re not sure of – so keep them simple and keep personally identifiable information out of them.

These are only a few simple steps to protect yourself from Facebook identity thieves, but when you think about it, you don’t really have to try very hard to make yourself an unattractive target for Facebook identity thieves. After all – if you make it too hard for identity thieves to get at your personal information, they’ve still got several hundred million other users to choose from.