You can hardly turn on the news now with out some horror story appearing about a government department misplacing a USB stick or losing a laptop containing a large amount of personal information about people. In this age of data protection it’s becoming more and more important for companies to safe guard the information they keep on file about people to stop it falling into the wrong hands (i.e. the hands of people looking to steal your identity).
People spend a lot of time worrying about who holds what information, even down to who has their email and postal address. After all no one wants extra spam either. Major companies and government departments are not the only things to watch though, most people forget about a much larger source of personal information that they have more control over than anyone, Facebook.
I am a big fan of social networks, I think they are a good way to network and keep in touch with people. However it is all too easy for a scammer to pick up your details from sites such as Facebook. People will happily post their date of birth, email and telephone numbers amongst other things on there and leave their profile open for any one to access and take a copy of their data. Mind you, it’s not just scammers you should be wary of. Plenty of people have lost their jobs or a relationship due to information that appeared on their Facebook page.
With that in mind it’s worth while remembering that there are a lot of privacy settings that a user can amend on Facebook. From the simple allow only friends to see my profile (one I would suggest everyone should use) through to locking down who can see each photograph and what can be posted to your news feed.
The All Facebook Blog has some very good pointers on fine tunning that privacy level on this post. Any one worried about their privacy and who has access to their information should head over there and have a read.