Facebook today is one of the most popular website and one of the most attacked too. But with some caution and common-sense, you can stay absolutely safe and continue to enjoy it! Here’s a list of 3 basic tips to safeguard your privacy as well as your Facebook account.

1) First and foremost, use a strong password.

You might have heard this a million times but still thousands of accounts are compromised every day because of weak passwords. Why is that? That’s because most of the people don’t know how to determine whether their password is weak or strong. Thus you might think that your password is strong while in reality it would be too weak.

Here are a few tips to choose a strong password:

• Don’t use a word that is connected to you because these days’ hackers use a technique called social engineering to guess your password. So your favorite quote or book title may not be the best password. The most effective way is to use a non-dictionary word.
• It’s good to have a password that is sufficiently long (8 or more characters).
• It should be mixed case and should include alpha-numeric and special characters.

2) Use proper Privacy Settings.

Facebook had recently come under heavy criticisms due to their confusing privacy settings. The pressure was so high that the Facebook team had to overhaul the settings to make it more user friendly.  Now you can select from a list of pre-configured settings such as “Everyone”, “Friends of friends”, “Friends only” and “Recommended” apart from customizing it as you wish.

You can use the recommended settings with the below points in mind:

If your friends list includes people whom you don’t know well, then you should change your privacy settings so that only people whom you trust can view important and personal details.

• For that first go to Privacy Settings page by clicking Account (found on top right corner of Facebook page) and  select Privacy Settings.
• Now click customize settings. Edit the settings under Contact information by selecting the drop down box and select Custom.

You can either select a specific user or choose to hide it to everyone by selecting “Only Me” .

Keep the tagged photos private. Follow the above steps to go to the customization page of privacy Settings. Under “Things others share” click the drop down box next to “Photos and videos I’m tagged in” and selecting the desired option.

3) Be careful of Facebook Apps … very careful!

Facebook apps might be fun to use but they also pose a threat of stealing your information. Now don’t get me wrong  – not all of the Facebook apps are not bad. But not all of them are not good either! So always exercise caution before allowing any new application. Remove apps that you don’t need anymore. You can view all the installed apps by going to the “Application Settings” page by clicking Account and then selecting “Application Settings”.

Identity fraudsters target Facebook and other social networking sites to harvest information about you. So please do take your Facebook privacy settings very seriously. Follow these basic tips and you can enjoy safe “Facebooking” !

Have any more tips to give? Please do share!

Want to Scan your Facebook privacy settings? Check out  Facebook Privacy Scanner or Norton Safe Web for Facebook.

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