:: Deepquest ::

Facebook has its advantages, but also its negative side. Apart from the fact that your boss can see you weren’t actually sick that day last week because of your status update at that time, there are also some real security issues. The good thing is, with a bit of knowledge about those threats, most of them can be avoided.

Here are 10 actions that shouldn’t be done on Facebook:
1. Using a weak password
Some password are very easy to crack. A strong password should be at least 6 characters long, and should include caps, numbers and special characters (like! Or?). It it always good to use words that won’t be found in a dictionary because a lot of cracking robots can try a bunch of existing words in no time.
2. Leaving Your Full Birth Date in Your Profile
This one is easy to change. Your full birth date doesn’t only reveal your age to anyone passing by, it also gives some great information to identity thefts.
3. Overlooking Useful Privacy Control Settings
It’s worth it to take a bit of time and look through all the privacy settings in Facebook, especially that they change it now and then and might modify your settings. Functions like blocking your profile to a single person, hiding albums from a group of people, etc. should be considered.
4. Mentioning That You’ll Be Away From Home
What better place for a thief to discover when your house is available than to check on Facebook? Even if you think you can trust all your friends, you never know when one of them is going to forget to close its account and leave it open for a unknown person.
5. Adding People You Don’t Know
It’s not because that girl in that bikini looks good or that guy looks hot that they will be safe to add. The friend of friend part of Facebook gets out of your control really fast when you add people you don’t know.
6. Accepting Friend Invitations From People You Don’t Know
Facebook isn’t a competition, it won’t do any good to have more and more friends if you don’t know them all.
7. Write On A Wall Instead Of Communicating Privately
For the sake of your privacy and the one of the person your contacting, don’t let the whole world know where your going tonight, at what time and with who.
8. Putting On Pictures Of Things You Shouldn’t (house, child, etc.)
Stories have been heard where people posted pictures of their house and thieves used the info to know exactly the location of the TV, the computer and which rooms were good to break in. It might also be good to keep yourself from showing off a brand new computer on Facebook.
9. Authorize Every App
Apps have a lot of power since they can access your personal information (you authorize them). If an applications seems like the kind you won’t ever touch after you installed it, it might be good to refrain from installing it. You can also uninstall apps that aren’t useful anymore.
10. Forget To Log Out When Using A Public Computer.