Guide on Facebook settings and good practices

Take back control of your Facebook data. This guide walks you through the essential settings you need to tweak for stronger privacy and outlines best practices for navigating the platform with security in mind.

Facebook (part of Meta) remains an essential tool for communicating and organizing, making it impossible for many people to simply log off. However, our deep concern about the company’s data collection practices persists. This guide is your countermeasure. It provides the step-by-step instructions needed to continue using the platform while severely restricting the data you share.

We will walk you through the settings and practices to regain control, covering:

• Profile Settings: Locking down your personal information.

• Post Settings: Controlling who sees your content, today and in the past.

• Reviewing Third-Party Apps: Cutting off external apps' access to your data.

• Minimising Targeted Ads: Reducing the use of your data for advertising.

• Good Practices: Essential habits for secure daily navigation.

Profile Settings

In this section we take a look at profile settings, namely with whom you share your personal information. This information includes your e-mail, phone number, birthday, hometown, family relationships, workplace and more.

If you are accessing Facebook through your browser,  go to your profile and then select About. You will see a summary of the information you have provided to Facebook under  Overview.

Go through the rest of the profile fields to set your preferred visibility for each. Be aware that the birthday field is split into day/month and year, enabling you to share the date for well-wishes while keeping your age private. For your security, we advise against listing or filling in your Home Town. To modify the visibility settings for any field, click the accompanying padlock icon.

If you are using the Facebook App on your mobile phone, go to your profile and select Edit Public Details. Then spend your time going through each field. 

Post Settings

This section covers the settings you can apply to your posts on Facebook, mainly who can see them.

If you are accessing Facebook through your browser go to Settings > Privacy > Your Activity > Who can see future posts. 

We recommend you consider setting your default to Friends or Friends except… which is the same setting with exceptions you can manually add in case you don’t want some friends to be able to see your posts. When set to Public, all your posts can be seen by anyone on or off Facebook.

You can also set who you want to be able to see your friend list, or search your profile through your e-mail or phone number. We recommend you consider keeping these two to yourself.

If you are using the Facebook App go to Menu > Settings & Privacy > Settings > Privacy Settings > Who can see your future posts?

Reviewing third party apps with access to your data

Over years of using Facebook, you've likely given several apps permission to access your data stored on the platform. It's important to have control over who you want having access to your data - this is bigger than just having access to your profile. In this section we will look into how to manage third-party apps' access to your Facebook profile and vice-versa.

On your browser head to the upper right corner of the Facebook page. Click Settings and Privacy > Privacy. On the left side you should be able to see a field named Apps and Websites where you will see which apps currently have access to your data. If you click View and edit you can make changes on this list. We recommend you consider removing any apps that you don’t know or that you no longer use.

On the Facebook app, click the icon on the bottom right corner, scroll down and choose Settings > Apps and Websites. Then you can see which apps you’ve logged in with Facebook.

Minimising targeted ads on Facebook

This sections shows you how you can minimise the usage of your data for advertising recommendations on Facebook.

1. Go to facebook.com and log in.

2. Once logged in click Settings and privacy, then click Settings

If  you can access the Accounts Centre:

3. Click Accounts Centre > Ad preferences > Ad settings > Activity information from ad partners

If you can not access the Accounts Centre:

Click Ads > Ad Settings > Activity information from ad partners

Click Review setting and select No, don't make my ads more relevant by using this information.

Good Habits: Your Facebook Behavior Matters

While privacy settings are key, your day-to-day conduct on Facebook is equally important for safeguarding your information. Keep these simple practices in mind as you navigate the platform:

Connection & Sharing

• Friend Requests: Decline requests from unknown individuals.

• Photo Consent: Make it clear you require consent before your picture is posted. Reciprocate by always getting consent before posting others' photos.

• Sensitive Content: Do not post private information in photos, captions, or identifying hashtags (e.g., location).

• Location Data: Never reveal your real-time location. Ensure background details in photos don't give it away.

Family & Security

• Children's Privacy: Use significant caution when sharing photos of your kids on social media.

• Device Use: If using a shared or public computer, log out without fail every time.

• Maintenance: Periodically review your privacy settings and carefully vet all third-party apps before granting access.