6 Steps to Safeguard Your Privacy on Facebook

By Austin O'Connor   En español Published March 22, 2018

Facebook says it soon will offer an easier way for people to control their privacy settings. This comes after the revelation that the Cambridge Analytica (CA) data analytics firm obtained

access to the personal information of more than 50 million Facebook users. The new menu feature will be labeled “privacy shortcuts.” You’ll be able to review what you shared, delete what you

want, download your data and sign up for two-factor authentication.

What has become clear over the last 10 days is that even the tiniest Facebook click can unleash your personal data and information in ways you likely never considered. CA manipulated a quiz

app called “ thisisyourdigitallife ” to get users'  personal information. But the act by CA, which has been linked to the Trump presidential campaign and the Brexit "leave" campaign, isn’t

considered a breach. It simply stripped information that users, mostly unwittingly, had exposed by taking the digital quiz. “People knowingly provided their information, no systems were

infiltrated,” Facebook posted on its official blog, “and no passwords or sensitive pieces of information were stolen or hacked.”

The new menu won’t be available for a few weeks, but there are ways to better safeguard your personal information now. Taking these steps will make it harder for companies to mine data from

your Facebook account.

Those aforementioned quizzes and other apps on Facebook usually require you to grant access in order to use them — and it’s easy to remember to “ungrant” that access once you’re finished.

"Access" means those apps remain linked to your account, with access to your personal information. Facebook comes right out and states this, though the reminder is placed deep within your

apps settings page:

"On Facebook, your name, profile picture, cover photo, gender, networks, username, and user id are always publicly available to both people and apps. Learn why. Apps also have access to your

friends list and any information you choose to make public."

The good news is it’s fairly easy to unlink those apps, if you know how: