In a survey conducted last year by the Pew Research Center,
Facebook remains by far the most popular social media site. As a member of the
military, and for family members of service members, it is more important than
ever to remain vigilant of operational security.
Sharing information on your Facebook timeline may seem
harmless but can be dangerous to loved ones and fellow service members.
Never accept a friend request from someone you don’t know,
even if they know a friend of yours. Don’t share information that you don’t
want to become public. Someone might target you for working in the Department
of Defense, so be cautious when listing your job, military organization,
education and contact information.
Providing too much information in your profile can leave you
exposed to people who want to steal your identity or sensitive operational
information.
Understanding what you can and cannot post on Facebook goes
a long way in protecting yourself online, but more can be done by adjusting
your privacy settings.
There are a lot of ways to protect your privacy on Facebook,
a lot of people are not aware that most information is available for everyone.
We did some research on how to set your settings into the highest security
level.
Choose who can view your Facebook posts
(1) Log into Facebook. Go to “Settings, Privacy.”
(2) There you have three subjects: “Who can see my stuff,”
“Who can contact me” and “Who can look me up.”
(3) To maximize the security on your page, choose “Only me”
or “Only friends.” This prevents other people from seeing stuff you post.
(4) Under “Who can look me up,” Facebook will ask, “Do you
want other search engines to link to your timeline?” Do not let other search
engines link to your timeline.
Maximize privacy of your timeline and prevent tagging
(1) When you post pictures on your timeline, you can change
the settings on who can see, comment or add things to it. You can also
determine who is allowed to post stuff on your timeline.
(2) Log into Facebook. Go to “Settings, Timeline” and
“Tagging.”
(3) There you have three subjects: “Who can add things to my
timeline,” “Who can see things on my timeline” and “How can I manage tags
people add, and tagging suggestions.”
(4) The best thing to do is to just make this public to just
you or your friends only. Don’t have friends of friends put stuff or comments
on your pictures and keep this as private as you can.
(5) When you’re “tagged” in a post, it means that someone
has created a link to your profile. You can turn on “Tag Review” to review tags
friends add to your content before they appear on Facebook. In the “How can I
manage tags people add and tagging suggestions” section, click edit and click
the disabled button and change its setting to enabled.
Prevent others from commenting on your profile picture
(1) With a recent Facebook update, anyone can see your
full-size profile picture.
(2) Through Photoshop, Microsoft paint or any other photo
editing software, you can change the size to 180 by 180 pixels. This will make
it a square image and smaller. Save this and use this one as your profile picture
on Facebook.
Stop Facebook from sharing your location
(1) Geotagging is the process of adding geographical
identification to photographs, videos, websites and shot message service, or SMS, messages. It is
the equivalent of adding a 10-digit grid coordinate to everything posted on the
Internet. You can prevent Facebook from sharing your location.
(2) Geotagging is typically done automatically on your
tablet or mobile phone. When you first installed Facebook on your tablet or
mobile phone, it probably asked for permission to use your phone’s location
services so that it could provide you with the ability to “check in” at
different locations and tag photos with location information. Revoke this
permission in your phone’s location services settings area.
(3) There are also apps to strip the geolocation. Koredoko,
deGeo (iPhone) or Photo Privacy Editor (Android) are just a few.
(4) If you post to Facebook, you may see a light-gray
location description in the lower left of the status box. Always check to see
if the location is posted. If it is, remove it. Simply hover your cursor or
finger over the location and click the X.
The Army’s Social Media Handbook provides information on
safe networking, how to register your unit site, Army branding and standards and
Facebook reference guides. It’s available at
http://www.us.army.mil/suite/doc/43167236 (AKO login required) or
http://www.slideshare.net/usarmysocialmedia (login blocked on government
computers).
The Air Force Social Media Guide is available at http://www.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-120327-048.pdf
Always remember: think before you post. Stay safe.