According to report, Facebook is still by far the most popular social media platform. It is crucial to continue to be aware of operational security as a military member and for family members of service members (OPSEC).
It may seem harmless to share information on your Facebook timeline, but doing so could put loved ones and fellow soldiers in risk.
Never accept a friend request from a stranger, even if they know one of your friends. Never divulge information that you wouldn’t want made public. Be cautious when stating your employment, military organisation, education, and contact information because you can be targeted because you work for the DOD. Giving up too much information in your profile can make you vulnerable to identity thieves or those looking to steal confidential business data.
Although knowing what you can and cannot share on Facebook helps you secure yourself online, there is still more you can do by changing your privacy settings.
There are several ways to protect your privacy on Facebook, and many users are unaware that the majority of information is public. We looked into the best ways to configure your settings for the highest level of security.
Click here to configure your Facebook profile’s highest level of security.
Pick the Facebook users who see your postings
- Log into Facebook and select Privacy under Settings.
- Subjects: Who can see my stuff? Who can contact me? Who can look me up?
- To increase security on your page, select Only me or Only friends. As a result, nobody else can view your posts.
- Under Who can search for me? Do you want other search engines to link to your timeline? asks Facebook. Keep external search engines from linking to your timeline.
Increase your timeline’s privacy and prevent tagging
- You can modify the settings for who can view, comment, and add stuff when you submit photographs to your timeline. You may control who is permitted to post on your timeline as well.
- After logging in, click to Settings, Timeline, and Tagging on Facebook.
- Who can add things to my timeline? Who can see things on my timeline? How can I manage tags people add?
- Setting this limit visibility to Only You or Friends Only is the best course of action. Don’t allow friends of friends to comment or post on your photos. As much as possible, keep this private.
- Being “tagged” in a post denotes that a link to your profile has been made by another user. To see the tags that friends have added to your material before they show on Facebook, turn on Tag Review. Click edit and set the settings to enabled under How can I manage tags people add and tagging suggestions?
Your profile picture
- You may now modify the size of your profile photo on Facebook thanks to a new update. You can also make the image unclickable and private.
- Resize the image to 180 x 180 pixels using Photoshop, Microsoft Paint, or another photo editing software. Use this as your Facebook profile photo by saving it.
- After it has been uploaded, click on your profile photo and choose Edit.
- Select Only Me from the Public drop-down menu by clicking on it.
Geotagging
- The process of geotagging involves including location information in images, videos, websites, and SMS messages. It is the equivalent of giving every Internet post a 10-digit grid coordinate. Facebook’s location sharing can be stopped.
- Your tablet or mobile phone often performs geotagging automatically. Facebook likely requested for permission to use your phone’s location services when you originally installed it on your tablet or mobile device so that you may be able to “check-in” at various locations and tag photos with location data. In the location services settings section of your phone, revoke this access.
- Apps to remove your geolocation are also available. Just a few include Koredoko, deGeo (for iPhone), and Photo Privacy Editor (for Android).
- If you post something to Facebook, you could notice a light-gray location description in the status box’s lower left corner. Always make sure the place is marked on a map. If so, get rid of it. Simply place your finger or the tip of your cursor over the area, then click the X.