Facebook is the world’s largest social network, and almost everyone of us has a Facebook account, and there are millions of people who use Facebook daily and for a prolonged period. But Facebook is not a safe place for all, and if you don’t know how to keep yourself protected online in Facebook, then there’s a lot of people waiting for you to step into their trap which may cause a big problem for you both online as well as in your life.

Though the people behind Facebook is working continuously to make Facebook a safer place for everyone, but still you need to be extra cautious to keep yourself safe on the world’s largest social networking site. In this regard, this article is a round up of some tricks which you should be aware of to keep yourself and others safe on Facebook, from being hacked or exploited.

Easy Ways to keep yourself Safe on Facebook

Avoid providing too much Personal Information

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One of the key ways of preventing any kind of trouble to your life through Facebook is to avoid providing an excess of information about yourself in Facebook. For, example if you list up your contact number to be seen by the public, then there is a chance that you will repent for it.

Unknown people will grab your contact number from your profile and may cause some problems be it an annoying sales call, or any contact which troubles you. And if you will share your personal information with everyone out there on Facebook, then some people might use this personal information to harass you online and also offline.

So, to prevent these kinds of unwanted situations you should always make sure that you share only the required and limited information about yourself with the public. Share your personal information only with those people who you know personally and not on Facebook.

Don’t Upload High-Resolution Images of Yourself

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Another good practice is not to upload high resolution pictures of yourself and your loved ones, because if you will upload high-resolution images on Facebook, and share it with the world, then it becomes easy for some people, who have any anger or feeling of revenge upon you, to do some manipulation with your images, which you would never want to happen.

People with bad intentions can download your photo and edit it into something totally different, for example, they can crop your face out of the original photo and place it somewhere else, which would make the resulting photo a disaster to you, as you can be harassed due to this editings. The role of high resolution images in this regard is that they help those people who might edit your photo, as if they edit high resolution photos of you, then the editings cannot be spotted clearly, as they will blend easily with the final image, and thus the situation of the final image will look real, even if it’s a fake one.

Its not a bad practice to upload high resolution pictures of the environment or any scenaries, but it’s always a good idea to avoid uploading high resolution pictures in which you or anyone of your loved ones are present. Its recommended that you uncheck the “High Resolution” mode while uploading pictures of yourself in Facebook.

If you still want to upload high resolution images to Facebook, then do make sure that only those people can see it who you personally know and have trust that they won’t use your images for any such bad intention. Uploading high resolution may cause you a problem rarely but it’s still better to be safe than to be sorry.

Avoid Disclosing Financial Information

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Disclosing your financial information like Credit card numbers, passwords, and other banking information might cause you serious problems. If you disclose your financial information to other people who you know only on Facebook, then there is a chance that they might use this information for stealing money from your account or may result in leaving a long bill for you to pay.

Now-a-days banks have tightened up the security for using Credit and Debit cards online, so that it becomes really difficult and challenging for any people to illegally take out money from your bank account using Credit and Debit cards. But still, your financial information is meant to be kept to yourself and not shared with everyone out there , isn’t it?

Don’t Follow Every Link you Get

Image Source: Leo Reynolds

Clicking on every link that you get via the chat box or message on Facebook is not at all a good habit, instead this habit can lead you to serious problems. You might be a victim of Phishing if you continue clicking on and following dangerous links.

Phishing is an activity performed by hackers to steal your personal data by putting up fake websites that look similar to the common websites that you use, so as to make you enter your private information like login id and password in those fake websites and grabbing them to hack your account at the respective websites.

In Phishing, you will get a link that will look close to the original link, but not exactly the same. For example, you may get a link like this, http://facecook.com/photo/37585943730hgf857 instead of a genuine link of Facebook.com, and which will ask for your Login ID and Password even if you are signed into Facebook. If you provide your login information on that fake website, then this information will be sent to the hacker who can easily sneak into your Facebook account. This can also happen in the case of online banking, where you be sent to enter your bank login information on a fake bank website.

For preventing this kind of Phishing activities, you should always check the links which you click and follow. For example, if someone gives you a link to something, like a Photo or something which might look very interesting to you, then you should check whether it’s a genuine link or not. If the link is a Phishing link then it should ask you to login to Facebook or anywhere else, so as to grab your login information.

In this case, you should always check the domain of the link, i.e., the website name, like if it’s a link for Facebook, then you should always check that the name of the website is www.facebook.com and not something like www.facecook.com or www.faacebook.com. You can do this by looking at the address bar of your browser,

If its a genuine link then the domain name should look something like the one given in the above picture, and if it’s a genuine link then it will never ask you to enter your login information once again, if you are already logged in. This is a way to prevent your online accounts from getting hacked by other users by Phishing.

These are some ways following which you can keep yourself and your loved ones safe on Facebook. The above mentioned ways are not mandatory for everyone to follow, but in order to keep yourself safe, it’s recommended that you keep in mind the above points while browsing Facebook. If you have any query or suggestion, please feel free to leave your comments below.

So, is Facebook really safe according to you without following the above ways?

Featured Image Source: Master OSM 2011