Has a Nigerian Prince left you millions of dollars that you must claim by emailing your bank account info, social security number and personal information to him?
Has a long lost Facebook friend sent you a chat message saying they were stranded in the middle of Europe and were needing a money wire transfer?
Some of you might laugh with these scenarios, but illegally targeting people’s personal information is a serious matter.
These days social media runs rampant, and we want you to be able to protect yourself from online predators. However, we still want you to be able to use tools like Facebook to help build your Evolv business.
With the current changes in Facebook’s privacy settings, it is easier than ever to be able to protect you and your friends from online predators that are trying to infringe upon your information.
One way you can protect yourself and your friends is to hide your friends list. Why would you want to do this? Well think about it… If I were an outside party who was looking to target your connections, I could go through your friends list and add every single one of them to mine. I could then invite them to an external website where I could collect all their personal information including phone numbers, emails, and in some cases social security numbers. Pretty scary, huh?
Follow these simple step by step instructions to keep you and your friends safe.
1. Click the drop down menu under “Account” in the upper right hand corner, then click “Privacy Settings”
2. You will then see a Privacy Settings Dashboard. Click on “View Settings” under “Basic Directory Information”
3. In the Basic Directory Information Dashboard, click the drop down button next to “See my friend list”
4. Here you can choose a few different options on how private you would like your friends list to be. Keep in mind that people are wanting to connect with YOU, and that if they are networking the best way to do it is to ask for personal introductions. This will alleviate your friends from being spammed. Click “Everyone” to hide your friends from others (Note: this will not hide your mutual friends).
5. If you have your friends already set up in different lists, then you can click “Custom” to hide your friends from certain lists. For example, I have a list called “People I Don’t Know.” Type in the list name and click “Save Setting.”
There are many more privacy settings you can set up, but this will get you started. For further information regarding Facebook privacy settings, visit Mashable’s page on How to Use Facebook Privacy Settings.
