social media security which relates to cyber crime

2. SOCIAL NETWORKING PLATFORMS
• Before choosing one you should consider the following points:
• Does it provide connection over SSL (like https) for all uses of the site, rather than just
during login? Are there no problems related to encryption, such as problems related to
encryption certificates?
• Read the End User License Agreement and Privacy Policy or Data Use Policy carefully.
How are your content and personal data treated? With whom are they shared? For a
useful add-on which helps users undestand the Terms of Service of many popular sites,
see Terms of Service; Didn't Read.
• What privacy options are provided for users? Can you choose to share your videos
securely with a small number of individuals, or are they all public by default?
• Do you know the geographical location of the servers, under which territorial
jurisdiction they fall or where the company is registered? Are you aware of how this
information relates to the privacy and security of your email activity and information?
Will the site's owners hand over information if they receive a governmental request to
do so?

3. 2.1 HOW TO CREATE A FACEBOOK ACCOUNT
• To create Facebook account open your web browser, (we recommend
Firefox web browser with security add-ons or Tor Browser), and type
https://www.facebook.com into address bar, to arrive at Facebook's
homepage.

4. Step 1 • If you use your public or work-related e-mail address, this will
make it easier for possible adversaries to find you. Note also
that Facebook's Terms of Use require you to use your real
name when using Facebook.
• You can provide a false name, although it should be noted
that this goes against Facebook's Terms of Use and you
may still be identifiable according to your IP address, among
other things.
• Connecting to Facebook through software such as Tor
Browser is also difficult as Facebook remembers your
location and may mistake your logins for attempted break-
ins.
• Considering all of the above, if you are concerned that your
identification, or the linking of your Facebook activities to
your offline work or personal life, might pose a threat to your
life, liberty, health, or work, or that of your family or friends,
perhaps it is better not to register or use Facebook.

5. • Step 2. Make sure you have read and understood Facebook's Terms
of Use and Data Use Policy before clicking sign up. These contain
important information about what information you are handing over
to Facebook and how it will be used by them.
•
• Step 3. On the Find Your Friends screen Facebook asks you to provide
your email address and password in order to look for contacts from
your e-mail account on Facebook, who you can later add as
Facebook contacts. We very strongly recommend that you skip this
step.

7. • Step 4. On the Profile Information screen Facebook asks you to
provide information such as the High school, College or University you
attended, and your current Employer. While this information may
make it easier for friends to find you, it will also make it easier for
adversaries to find you too. We recommend that you click skip this
step.

9. • Step 5. On the Profile Picture screen Facebook asks you to provide a
picture of yourself, either by uploading one or taking a picture with
your webcam.

10. 2.2 GENERAL SETTINGS
• Step 6. From your Facebook Home page, click on the small arrow
beside Home in the top right-hand corner and select Settings.

11. • Step 7. You should update your password regularly, preferably at least
once every three months. Remember, it is extremely important that
you choose a strong password to protect your account and your
information.
• Step 8. Your network: Facebook allows you to join networks, based
on criteria such as your high school, university, employer, hometown
or current city, as a means of making it easier for people to find and
connect with you. While this may make it easier for you to find
contacts, it will also make it easier for people, including adversaries,
to find you. Considering the volume of users of the site, it is
improbable that you need to join a network in order to connect with
the people you know and trust on Facebook.

12. • Step 9. Click on in the menu on the left
hand side. This will open the Security Settings
page.

14. • Step 10. Click on the Login Notifications tab. Here, you can choose to
be notified if an attempt is made to log in to your Facebook page
from a device which you have not used before. Choose whether to
receive by Email or Text Message/Push Notification.
• Note: If you select to receive alerts via Text Message, this means you
will link your mobile phone number to your Facebook account,
making your activities on the site more easily identifiable.

16. • Step 11. Login Approvals: For added security, you can choose to have
to enter a security code every time your account is accessed from a
computer or device Facebook does not recognise. The security code
will be send as SMS to your mobile phone.
• Note: Enabling this option will make it more difficult for someone else
to access your account unless they also have access to your mobile
phone. However, as mentioned above, it also involves associating
your mobile phone number with your Facebook account. You should
consider the pros and cons of this for your own situation and make
the choice which you consider more secure for you.

17. • Step 12. Code Generator: This setting allows you to use the Facebook
mobile app on your smartphone in order to generate login codes or
new passwords.

18. • Step 13. Application Passwords: If you use applications on Facebook,
this option allows you to generate individual passwords for them.
Unless you have a specific need to do so, however, we recommend
avoiding Facebook applications.
• Step 14. Trusted Contacts: This option allows you to select certain
contacts from your Facebook friends who can help you to log-in to
your account if for some reason you are otherwise unable to. This is
done through sharing a secret code with your contact. If you decide
to use this option, be sure to choose your trusted contacts carefully
and establish a secure means of communication for sharing the code.

19. • Step 15. Trusted Browsers: Here you can review the browsers most
frequently used to access your Facebook account.
• Step 16. Active Sessions: This shows details of any Facebook session
that you may have forgotten to log out of - for example in an internet
café, or a friend's computer - and therefore is still active. The location is
determined by the IP address.
• It is very important to close these sessions in order to prevent anyone
else accessing your Facebook account, especially if you note any devices
in the list which are not yours or you do not recognise. To do this,
simply click End Activity beside each active session.

20. 2.4 PRIVACY SETTINGS AND TOOLS
• Step 1. To edit your Facebook Privacy Settings, click on the small
arrow beside Home in the top right-hand corner and select Settings.

21. • Step 2. This will take you to the Settings menu. On the left-hand side,
choose Privacy.

22. • Who can see my stuff?
• Step 3. The first option here creates a default rule for your future
status updates: Who can see your future posts?. Here, you can choose
between making them available to the entire public, your Facebook
friends, yourself only, or a custom group which you can determine.
• Step 4. The second option allows you to review the posts which other
Facebook users have tagged you in. To see this, click on Use Activity
Log.

24. • Step 5. The thrid option allows you to restrict access to previous
status updates of yours which may have been public. Note, however,
the limitation that individuals you tagged and their friends will still be
able to see this content.

25. • Who can contact me?
• Step 6. In this section, you can decide who is able to send you a friend
request. This is not particularly important in terms of information security,
since in the end, it is still you who decides who to accept as a friend, and
you should always exercise caution and avoid adding people who are
unknown or untrusted. If you want to change this setting, click Edit.
• Step 7. Whose messages do I want filtered into my inbox?: Facebook allows
you to filter the messages you receive into two folders: Inbox and Other.
Here you can choose between Basic Filtering, which is more permissive of
messages from people who are not on your friend list, and Strict Filtering,
which is less permissive.

27. • Who can look me up?
• Step 8. Here, you can limit the ease with which people can look you
up by knowing your phone number or e-mail address (although this is
still technically possible), as well as limiting people's ability to find
your Facebook page via search engines. The default settings make it
as easy as possible for individuals to find you this way, including
possible adversaries. Click Edit on the first two options and ensure
that only Friends can search for you by your e-mail address and
phone number. For the third option, click Edit and uncheck the box
which says Let other search engines link to your timeline.

29. 2.5 TIMELINE AND TAGGING
• Step 1. In the left-hand sidebar, click on the Timeline and Tagging
menu.

30. • Step 2. If you want your timeline to be truly yours, it's advisable to
disallow posts on your timeline from anyone but yourself. To do this,
click edit beside Who can post on your timeline and select Only Me.
• Step 3. Here, you can decide what happens when other friends tag
you in their posts and photographs. It is advisable that you click edit
and enable the Review posts that friends tag you in... option so that
you can prevent any irresponsible tagging from friends appearing on
your timeline. However, this won't prevent their posts (including your
tag) from being visible to their friends, or perhaps even the public,
depending on their settings

32. • Step 4. Who can see things on my timeline? This item is associated
with the previous options. Previously, we've decided who gets to
publish material to your timeline, and here, you get to decide who
can read them. If you click Edit, you can change these settings so that
either everyone, friends of friends, a custom group of people, or only
yourself can see posts you've been tagged in, or things others post on
your timeline.
• The first option, View As, is an interesting way to see what certain
individuals can see on your timeline. However, keep in mind that
Facebook can still record all of the above and share it with third
parties including law enforcement.

34. • Step 5. How can I manage tags people add and tagging suggestions?
This refers to tags of you by other users of Facebook. It's best if you
switch on the Review tags people add to your own posts before the
tags appear on Facebook option, and limit the audience for the
second option to Only Me. Facebook has begun using a form of facial
recognition technology which allows it to identify photographs that
look like you among your friends' and contacts' photos and suggest
that they tag you in the photos. Naturally, for rights advocates, this
could be particularly sensitive and therefore it's strongly
recommended that you deactivatethis option if it is available to you.

35. 2.6 BLOCKING USERS AND APPS
• Step 6. In the menu on the left, select Blocking. Here, Facebook offers
ample opportunities for blocking unwanted, intrusive, and sometimes
potentially dangerous information.

36. • Step 7. Restricted List. Here, you can discretely add Facebook friends
to a list which will limit them to only being able to view information
you share publicly on your timeline (per the settings we explored
above). To add friends to the list, click Edit List.

37. • Step 8. Block users. Here you can block a user from accessing your
Facebook page, any of your content, or adding you as a friend.

38. • Step 9. Block app invites. Often, we will have Facebook friends who
are enthusiastic about a particular application, often a game, and
they will continuously send us invites to join this game. Here, you can
block application invites from such friends.

39. • Step 10. Block event invites. Similarly, here you can block invitations
to events from certain Facebook friends.

40. • Step 11. Block application. As the name suggests, here you can
prevent an application from accessing all but your public information.

41. 2.7 FOLLOWERS
• Step 16. Click on Followers from the menu on the left.
• Step 17. Ensure that Friends is selected.

42. 2.8 APPLICATIONS
Many Facebook users love and actively use applications — for example,
games and ways to empower communications, such as social readers. Each
application is associated with your Facebook account, and the basic data of
your Facebook account will be available to any application (such as your
name, gender, public pictures and network). Also, when installing a new
application, it may ask for your permission to have access to the same or
other information about you and your friends. This includes a variety of data,
such as age, place of residence, education, circle of friends and contacts.
Thus, the application can gather and share information such as what country
you come from and where you currently are. Some of this information you
may consider sensitive. Therefore, for safety reasons, we recommend not to
use Facebook applications unless you really need to.

43. • Step 1. Click on Apps in the menu on the left.

44. Step 2. Apps you use. Here, you can enable or disable the so-called
"Facebook Platform" which allows you to use Apps. By default, this option is
enabled. It allows you, for example, to register for other sites using your
Facebook account. On the one hand, this is convenient: no need to spend
time on the registration form and fill in all the fields, especially if you do not
intend to make frequent use of this site (for example, you want to leave a
comment on a news story, or sign a petition). On the other hand, your
comment will be linked to your Facebook account, recorded and possibly
shared. If using Apps isn't important to you or your work, it's recommended
that you click Turn Off Platform in order to better protect your privacy. If you
do decide to leave the option enabled, then pay attention to the list of
applications already installed at this point. Do you really need them all?
Step 3. By clicking on an app you can see what information it has access
to.

46. • Step 4. To remove an application, click on the 'x' beside the
app in the list, and then click Remove in the warning window
which pops up.

47. Step 5 Apps others use. We also have to consider that some of
our Facebook friends bring our information into the apps that
they use. By clicking on Apps others use, you can un-check the
boxes beside categories of your information which you don't want
to share with your friends' applications.

49. Step 6. Instant personalisation. Facebook's Instant Personalization
also grants certain websites access to your public profile information
when you visit them. What these sites do is that they adjust their web
contents to suit your wants and needs, thus creating a personalized
experience. To be more secure, if this service is available in your
region, you should disable it.
Step 7. Click on the screen which will appear to explain
what Instant Personalisation is, and at the bottom of the
next page, make sure the box marked Enable instant
personalisation on partner websites is unchecked.

50. 2.9 ADVERTISING SETTINGS
Step 1. In the column on the left, select Ads.
Facebook currently promises not to associate your name or
picture with third-party advertisements, although they leave
space for this to be possible in the future. It's a good idea to
change these settings so that your details still remain private in
case advertising rules change in the future:
Step 2. Click Edit beside Third Party Sites.
Step 3. Select No-one and select Save Changes.

52. • Step 4. Social Ads. Here, Facebook encourages users to become
ambassadors for products or pages they have 'liked'. This means that
you could be used to advertise a page or product to your friends. If
this makes you uncomfortable, it's recommended that you disable it.
• Step 5. Under Ads and friends, click Edit and select No-One from the
drop-down menu.

54. • Step 6. Website and mobile app custom audiences. Facebook by
default tries to pick to display targeted advertising on your tastes and
interests. To get rid of this, you need to click on the Opt Out link in
this paragraph.

55. • This will open a page titled Custom Audiences from your Website and
Mobile App, where Facebook gives more information about its
advertising policy. In the middle of the text is the Opt Out button for
you to confirm.

56. • After a request for confirmation, you will see the result:
Note that changes made to this setting are not recorded by Facebook, but are
rather stored in your browser. Unfortunately, you must repeat this process for
every browser, app and device you use to connect to Facebook.