It might seem like Facebook is omnipresent knowing what to feature on your feed that draws your interest that you might think of a coincidence, but this is all based on the data collected through your engagement. One way to avoid Facebook from collecting your data is changing your settings for more privacy that will also help to prevent getting hacked with improved security.
The security of your account can be compromised if someone gains access to your account by knowing your password, but this can be avoided using two-factor authentication for your login. This will help protect your account when you log in by getting a code through SMS or an authenticator app like Google Authenticator.
You can set this up under the “Security and login” settings under ‘Two-factor authentication to choose your preferred method for setting up additional security. Facebook also has a feature that sends a notification under the security settings page with the option to be notified of unrecognized logins with the ‘Get alerts about unrecognized logins.’
Another feature that can help protect your privacy is disabling the ‘Face recognition’ under “Settings” that will prevent Facebook from recognizing your face in an image or photo that can automatically tag you. Facebook got in trouble for automatically using this feature without permission and is planning on shutting down this feature to avoid any future problems.
It might not come as a shock to you, but Facebook is also tracking your location that can compromise your personal safety, and is often tracked through your mobile device. Facebook also tracks users through location data embedded in photos on your phone and IP address. Under ‘Location’ settings you can turn off the location history for mobile devices and under “View Location History” you can choose the option ‘Delete all location history’ to erase the location data collected.
Your privacy can also be compromised through posts that you can restrict under the “Public posts” settings that will help you limit public profile information, post comments, and post notifications restricted to Friends only. You can also limit followers to friends only under the option ‘Who can follow me.’
Facebook profiles can show up on search engine results and only requires people to have a Facebook account to gain access to your profile that can be generated several times in certain cases for search engine results that can be connected to your account. Under the Privacy feature in the settings, go to the “How People Find and Contact You” option under ‘Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile?’ that you can disable from changing the yes selection to no.
Facebook also takes advantage of collecting data for advertising purposes that will fill your feed with ads that can be adjusted under “Ad preferences” with the option ‘Ad settings.’ To disable these settings, go under “Manage data used to show you ads” and click the sub-head of each option to disable everything you can by changing the visit ability to ‘Only Me’ everywhere possible.
