The Facebook Timeline is rolling out across the world. Privacy watchdogs are up in arms – with good reason. The new timeline will essentially provide a single, continuous list of everything you’ve ever done on Facebook along with notes based on every fact you’ve shared with the social networking site. Your Facebook data can provide identity thieves with info needed to hack your passwords.
Birth data
Go to the very end of your timeline. Whatever information you’ve shared about your birth will appear there. It might be your date of birth, but might also include other data. The name of the city where you were born is a frequently-used password verification question. Delete or hide all information about your birth.
Pet data
Another password verification question is the name of our first four-legged companion. You may have uploaded childhood pictures with your first dog, cat or fish and included the animal’s name in a caption. Look through your timeline for such pictures so you can hide or delete them. Well-intentioned relatives may have uploaded childhood pictures of you as well, so search your albums for any such images where you’ve been tagged. Remove the tags.
Childhood information
Residences, teacher’s names and other data about your early life experiences that you’ve posted about will appear in your timeline. Scour it clean of such information.
Family info
The Holy Grail for identity thieves might be your mother’s maiden name. If you’ve ever listed it on Facebook you should find such references and delete them. The same applies to any relative’s middle name.
Academic information
Seemingly harmless data about your scholastic life can be used against you. Look for references to the names of schools you attended, mascots, teachers’ names and other data to hide. For example, you may have “liked” the page for your high school mascot. Unlike it and hide the message about your actions from your Timeline.
Other items to hide
Visit every site you use that requires a password and click the “forgot password” link. Note the recovery questions. Find all references to that data in your Timeline and remove them.
Items to avoid posting
Read the list of security questions at goodsecurityquestions.com and avoid posting anything that might provide a hacker with the answers to those questions, even the bad ones.
It will take work but your privacy is worth it.