News - Security Issues

Facebook users: be careful of the new "recommended" security settings!

"We're making some changes to give you more control of your information and help you stay connected," Facebook informs us. Then they "guide" us through choosing our privacy settings.

Sounds fine, right?

Except their recommended settings are not what the Secure Florida Staff considers secure.

For example, they suggest that you share About Me, Family and Relationships, Work and Education, and the posts you create with "Everyone." Now when they say "everyone," they mean everyone - everyone on the Internet can see it.

They further suggest that you share Photos and Videos of Me, Birthday, and Religious and Political Views with "Friends of friends." That's better than sharing it with everyone, but do you really trust a bunch of people you don't actually know? When you select that setting you are in essence saying that you trust all of your friends to have only trustworthy people on their own Friends list.

Secure Florida recommends that you be very careful of sharing any of that information with people you don't know directly. With Identity Theft on the rise, make sure that you don't compromise your security by telling the bad guys what they need to know.

Take a few minutes now to check your Facebook privacy settings, as well as those of your children. We recomment selecting "Only friends" for all of your privacy settings.