Being a conscientious senior myself, and caring about the safety of ALL SENIORS on Facebook, I felt it important to post a list of Senior Facebook Safety tips.
The tips below will help you enjoy your Facebook journey with more confidence, and fewer misfortunes.
1. Never share private contact information.
The first and foremost security measure is to NEVER share your phone number, mailing address, or your home address.
2. Set the Privacy settings on your profile to "Friends."
It's usually not a good idea to keep all your information public. By going to Privacy Settings, you will be able to control who has access to your information and pictures. A good tip is to select “Friends” for who can see your posts.
3. Never post information regarding an upcoming vacation or trip as your status.
Doing so is just asking for your house to be robbed. If you want to post photos and details of your trip, do so after you return home, not before or during your vacation.
4. Maintain a good secure password.
Don't make your password something obvious such as your birthday. Try to have at least one capital letter, one lowercase letter, two numbers, and a symbol. The longer and more complicated the password, the safer you are from getting your account hacked.
Also, remember to log out after you're finished with Facebook if you are on a shared computer.
5. Don't use Facebook for online dating.
The purpose of Facebook is to connect you with people you know. Using your Facebook profile for online dating makes your profile public, which means you're sharing your information with everyone, even though you don't know them, a risk that you shouldn’t take.
6. Beware of fake friend requests:
If you get a friend request and don’t recognize the person’s name or photo, be suspicious. Look at their profile and see how recently they’ve updated, look at the number of friends they have, and if you have any mutual friends. If anything strikes you as strange, send them a message and see if they respond. If not, or if the response makes no sense, don’t accept the friend request.
You can add mutual friends that you don't know if you want to, although it is not recommended. If needed, you can remove persons as a friend by going to your friend list. Also, You should block anyone who threatens or harasses you.
7. Check before clicking on a link from Facebook.
Before clicking on a link from Facebook, always remember to check the address bar, which should always display "www.facebook.com" and nothing else like "www.facebook36.tk" or "www.facebook1.php", etc. which is a giveaway of a phisher that can steal your e-mail and password, as well as post spam links to your friends' Walls.
8. Be selective when joining Groups.
Only join well monitored groups who weed out scammers & people with bad intentions. It’s easy to tell by reading their description and rules. If they have only a generic description and rules, they probably aren’t monitoring very well, if at all. We’ll monitored groups are strict in their descriptions and rules.
9. Watch out for scammers:
If someone sends you a message claiming they’re stranded, have a huge fine to pay, or need some kind of help, be wary. Call a friend or family member to check out the legitimacy of such claims.
Please share this with all your senior friends to help them stay safe!
Story by David Quinton
A member of Senior Citizen Friendship Group <<JOIN US!
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