Top 6 Best Ways to Protect Your Privacy on Facebook

How did the app "thisisyourdigitallife" help harvest data from more than 50 million profiles on the world’s biggest social media?...

How did the app "thisisyourdigitallife" help harvest data from more than 50 million profiles on the world’s biggest social media? This made people wonder what they could do to protect themselves on Facebook. Deleting your account is the surest way, but also a very drastic measure users aren’t willing to take. In this post we are sharing security and privacy tips to protect yourself on Facebook.

Top 6 Best Ways to Protect Your Privacy on Facebook

1. Audit Privacy Settings

You can make sure only you see your friend lists and only friends see your posts by auditing the network’s privacy settings. Minimize the info you share publicly by checking your settings. Make sure you read Facebook’s privacy policies. Typically, they will ask you to agree to their terms of service when you sign up for a new web tool or app. Pay close attention to the policy and always go through the terms. Don’t sign up for the app or tool if certain expressions suggest third parties might acquire your data.

2. Check and Curate Apps

Apps, games, or third-party sites will keep accessing your data if you used Facebook to sign in to them. Go to the social network’s settings page. To see the apps linked to your account, click on the Apps tab. From here, you can pay close attention to the access rights granted to these third parties to see the data you share. If you’re not using a certain app anymore or find it suspicious, delete it. The good news is that Facebook is always making changes to prevent the unauthorized collection of information.

Make sure you check out the setting for apps used by other people. This is on the App Settings page too. This setting lets you select the details shared about your profile when apps are used by friends. If you don’t want your friends’ apps to access your personal information, such as date and place of birth, simply uncheck all the boxes you see here.

3. Specify the Audience for Each Post

Limit access to your posts to “friends” or a select group of friends. To do this, go to Friends and choose More Options from the drop-down menu. Then go to Custom. This will pull up a list of friends who should get access. Typically, these are people you talk to the most often or whom you’ve selected in the past. If you want a specific person to access your posts, but don’t see their name, type it in. It will appear as you type.

4. Install a Tracker Blocker

Certain add-ons try to block trackers that sites embed. Sometimes you can’t avail of the site’s full functions if you use trackers like these. On Google Chrome, you might find Privacy Badger and Disconnect useful.

Can these add-ons be critical to your privacy? Apps on Facebook can plant cookies that gather information about you when you use them. These cookers will keep tracking you even if you’re not using the app in question anymore. They will track people who respond to your status updates or other sites you visit.

5. Clear Browsing History

Clear your browsing history and cookies from time to time. Browser developers have instructions on how to delete history for Chrome and Firefox, for example. You can delete trackers and cookies this way, but keep in mind they tend to return.

6. Prevent Ads from Loading

The only way to do this is by installing an ad blocker. Even bigger sites lack full control over the ads that appear. Their ad networks can include malicious code. Also, be suspicious of unknown entities even after reading their privacy policies.

In the case of Trump’s campaign, the app "thisisyourdigitallife" fine print never mentioned the information would be used for commercial purposes. Officially, it was developed by Cambridge University for academic ones. Our point? Never share your data with unfamiliar institutions or companies. You can also use online services to check your own data available on internet.