Using Facebook is becoming a bit tricky. What the business called Facebook thinks you should share about yourself and what you think you should share about yourself are likely to be very different.
The headline example is a real one. A relative posted his travel pics on Facebook, Other people he met on his travels also tagged him in their photos. One of these tagged photos was of a rarely visited South American ruin. Clicking on this photo took me to the photographers Facebook album where I saw more great photos of this rare ruin, but included in the same album were photos of her family, her cat, her drunken farewell party, and pictures of her and her friends sun baking. Maybe she is happy about this, maybe not.
If you are on Facebook check your settings.
If you don’t know how to do this – learn – now.
Usually I tell people using social media sites to lock down as much personal identifying information as possible. Leave just enough to do the job (whatever that might be).
With Facebook it might be a good idea to not just limit but remove any non-essential information altogether, particularly if you use any of the novelty Facebook applications (like Farmville, Send a Drink etc) that require you to share your profile information.
The other problem with Facebook is it’s not just you. You might need to have a word with your friends about what they put up about you and how it’s shared from their site
Here are a couple of other things you can do when dealing with non-essential and/or non work related sites (Obviously there are legitimate reasons for sites to request information eg when you buy stuff online, but that’s not I am referring to here).
- If you need to provide an email address, create a gmail account and use that – not your home or work email. If possible make this gmail account the only contact for anything non essential.
- Unless you are getting something delivered or mailed, don’t provide an address. If I have to enter an address I use something like a government office or tourist attraction.
- If they make me give a date of birth I usually use something like 01/01/1900
- Don’t provide a phone number – if they must contact you by phone use a work number, not your home number, and definitely not your mobile.
I’m not saying don’t use Facebook or don’t engage with online communities and business, I’m saying be aware of what you’re sharing and what the implications are. If you are happy having it all out there for all to see, and are prepared for the spam that will result that’ s fine, but don’t assume your friends are as open.
Sites like Facebook are not benign or static. They are businesses looking to make a buck.
If you have kids there are other reasons to be a bit careful. Have a chat with them about how to set their (and your) privacy setting.