What can you do to protect your information on Facebook?

The unscrupulous American, tax avoiding, extremist hosting, fake news spreading behemoth that is Facebook is under intense scrutiny after The Guardian revealed that 50 million Facebook profiles have been harvested for Cambridge Analytica in a major data breach.

What can you do to protect your information on Facebook?

The most effective way to stop your information being gathered by Facebook, and then used by the American behemoth and third party companies, is to not have a Facebook account.

Arwa Mahdawi asks in a Guardian article, 'Facebook: is it time we all deleted our accounts?'

She explains: 'When a 19-year-old Zuckerberg had just started building Facebook, he sent his Harvard friends a series of instant messages in which he marvelled at the fact that 4,000 people had volunteered their personal information to his nascent social network. People just submitted it ... I don’t know why ... They 'trust me’ ... dumb f****.'

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/20/facebook-is-it-time-we-all-deleted-our-accounts

For those who decide to delete their account, another Guardian writier, Alex Hern, has written 'a guide to life after Facebook' and explains what you need for a "Zuck-free existence".

https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/mar/20/delete-your-account-a-guide-to-life-after-facebook

For those who are prepared to continue being profiled but want to attempt to restrict how much information is being gathered by Facebook, follow the steps below.

• Log in to Facebook and visit the App setting page.
• Click edit button under Apps, Websites and Plugins.
• Disable platform

This will mean that you won't be able to use third-party sites on Facebook and if that is is a step too far, there is a way of limiting the personal information accessible by apps while still using them:

• Log into Facebook's App settings page
• Unclick every category you don't want the app to access, which includes bio, birthday, family, religious views, if you are online, posts on your timeline, activities and interests

There are some others pieces of advice too.

Never click on a 'like' button on a product service page and if you want to play these games and quizzes, don't log in through Facebook but go directly to the site. Using Facebook Login is easy but doing so, grants the app's developer access to a range of information from their Facebook profiles.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43469656