We’re sure that you’re aware that there’s been a lot of talk recently about the use of personal data from Facebook and Instagram and how this is shared with third party apps.
There is no denying that Facebook is now desperately trying to harvest back some control and regain the world’s trust on what happens to the information that you share. Ultimately, I guess that we can take a little bit of control on the situation by understanding what we’re sharing.
In terms of a few tips from Social Progress, consider this Social Media advice…
- Share your experiences with friends and on your profile, but perhaps don’t ‘Check in’ when you’re at home. This gives away the location of where you live.
- You can remove the year you were born from Facebook, whilst keeping your birthday on your profile. Meaning that people can still send you lots of lovely messages, but not know exactly when you were born.
- Try not to share images of your address, car registration or bank cards when you post pictures on Social Media
- When it comes to sharing images of your children and loved ones not on Facebook, think about how they would like to be seen in the future and whether this content is suitable.
From a business perspective…
Whether you’re a business looking to market to your target audience or the person being marketed to, personal and directed marketing messages can be very useful. If you’re interested in going on holiday and travelling, you may actually want to see information and adverts on travel insurance and excursions. It is also of a major advantage to businesses that they’re able to share information with you that you will find useful. It declutters your newsfeed and makes your Social Media experience more enjoyable.
What can I do to check my own personal Facebook Profile?
There’s a quick health check that you can do from you mobile to check your security settings in Facebook.
Head to ‘Settings & Privacy’, then ‘Account Settings’ and then ‘Privacy’. From here, you will find the very handy tool which allows you to ‘Check a few important settings’.
Going through this handy health check gives you a plain and simple overview of what is shared, with whom, as well as personal information such as your mobile number, email address, employer, education and relationship status. Once you’re happy with what is being shared, you can easily see a list of the third party applications that have access to your Facebook profile information. You can very easily delete the ones that you no longer want on there, as well as edit who can see what – see our previous blog post – Which Third Party Apps Have Access To Your Facebook Profile?
It’s super simple.
You can achieve the same thing from a desktop computer by going to Settings and Privacy.
In conclusion…
Social Media has opened up whole new opportunities for businesses to know their clients and for consumers to view useful information and new products. It keeps us connected with friends and family that are far away and allows us to look back fondly at memories that we’ve shared. Before you press ‘Post’ just have a think about who might be seeing this and how you’ll feel about it in 5 years’ time. Your digital footprint will always follow you around, so just make sure it’s a good one.