Facebook Privacy

I'm back after a month break due to a 2 week vacation then catching up on all the things I missed while out.

In curating my Facebook feed to open up this blog, I realized the level of freedom and control that Facebook offers in it's privacy settings.  Few people fail to recognize how open their Facebook may be and how locked down you can make it.

You want to do this proactively as you never know when someone will use your profile information against you.  I was once pursued by a lawyer who used my LinkedIn information to begin calling me at work.  Debt Collectors and potential employers check out your social media all the time.

First of all, a few features:

• Look at your page as a public user sees your profile

When looking at your feed, click on your name in the upper right hand corner
On the lower right hand of your cover photo is a "..."
Click on it, then select "View As..."
Note that in the ribbon at the top, you can type int he name of a person and see your profile as they see it.  It's a good way to check to make sure you are blocking things from someone in particular.

You are now seeing your profile as a person who isn't a Friend or Friend of a Friend sees it.  Check for posts you didn't mean to make public.  Check your About section and pictures to see what is visible.

All of these permissions can be changed in your Edit Profile section.

• Limit Past Posts

If you want to adjust your privacy settings for all past posts, you can go into Settings then select Privacy then for Limit the Audience... choose Limit Old Posts




Next, the settings you'll want to look at (all of these can be found in the Settings section) and the recommended setting.  This will give you a locked down profile without making it unusable.

Privacy

• Who can send you friend requests: Friends of Friends
• Who can look you up using the email address you provided?  Friends of Friends
• Who can look you up using the phone number you provided?  I allow Everyone, but maybe you want to make this Friends of Friends
• Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile?  No (If you've googled your name, you probably see a link to your facebook profile.  This will block that)

Timeline and Tagging

• Who can post to your timeline? Friends
• Review Posts...?  Yes (This will prevent someone from posting inappropriate posts or pictures on your timeline)
• Who can see posts you've been tagged in on your timeline?  Friends
• Who can see what others have posted to your timeline? Friends
• How can I manage tags people add and tagging suggestions?  Review all of these

Public Posts

• Who can follow me?  Friends
• Public Post Comments: Friends or Friends of Friends
• Public Profile Info: Friends

Look Yourself Up

Like I said, last night's post was a freebie, but this one will be short.

One of the easiest things you can do for your own personal security is to google yourself.  Google your name with quotes around it and see what you find.  Maybe google some of your usernames. Look for your personal information being exposed.  While you are at it, look at the results in the perspective of what an employer would look at (I google any applicant before I hire them).

Use different search engines...Google, Bing, Duck Duck Go, Yahoo.

A couple years ago, I found that a group my son was a part of had accidentally left all their registration records exposed, so when I looked up my name, I saw records that included my name, address, phone, email, and kid names.  In working with the group, I was able to close the exposure for all the kids involved.

You may find forum posts you made when you were more young and stupid that you may want to have deleted or marked as private.

Take a look at your social media profiles as someone who isn't logged in.  Is that political rant against Donald Trump public?  Are those updates to LinkedIn when you are dissatisfied with your job being broadcast to your boss?  Tweak your security and privacy settings so you are only sharing what you want to share.

Tech Support Call

Earlier this week, I had a call from "Tech Support" informing me that my computer was infected and they wanted to help me fix it.  Don't believe them.  

I messed with them and followed their instructions to access a screenshare tool.  When they gave me the access code I used it to report them.

If you think about it, how would anyone be able to connect your computer communication with your phone number?  And especially, how would they know to connect it with your cell phone?  Even worse, these people called my work number.  

If you think they might be valid, go to google and type "What's my IP" then ask the support person what your IP address is (do this before you connect to their remote support tool).  I promise it won't match.  

This lady pressed on after I told her I reported her saying "I'm with the government and you just reported the government to the government."  When I asked what my IP address was, she confidently made one up, but it was way wrong.  

  

Crashplan Backup

This is my first attempt at a blog.  I'm going to start by providing tips for folks to keep themselves safe, whether it be online or otherwise.

My first tip will be to back up your data.  There has been a rash of ransomware going around lately that encrypts all your data.  They ask for a ransom in order to get the password to decrypt it.

I use Crashplan.  It's about $5 a month for one computer to back unlimited data up to the cloud.  Our phones are backed up to Google and all other devices feed into my main computer, so this works for me.  

They have 3 methods of backup:
1) Backup to external hard drive or network share.  This is free.
2) Backup to a friend.  If you have a lot of data, you can backup using step one, then give the external drive to your friend, have them install the software and keep your stuff backed up offsite for free.
3) Backup to the cloud.  This is the only thing you have to pay for, but data is unlimited.  I have 5 TB up there now (it took 4 months to get it up there).

The only downside is if you have over a TB, you'll need to make sure you have a large amount of RAM installed and do a memory tweak.  Since it runs on Java, it can be a memory hog.

Many folks speak very highly of backblaze as well.  It does not offer the option of backing up to a friend.

As for me, since I have so much data and it is very slow to upload, I back everything up to a external hard drive and began backing critical data to the cloud.  Once that completed, I began the 4 month task of letting everything upload to the cloud.

From a security perspective, you don't want anyone snooping in your data, thus Crashplan also allows the option of encrypting your data with a separate personal key.  DO THIS!!!!  Then save the key to a separate cloud service.  If you lose it, you lose your data.  The benefit of this is I no longer really care about the security of the crashplan service.  So long as they use standard algorithms (they do) the only way someone can see my data is to get a hold of my key.