Many people spend a considerable amount of time on Facebook.  Identity thieves and hackers know this and are focusing their efforts against both Facebook as a company and individual Facebook users, attempting to gather personal information that can be used to make you a victim of identity theft.  Many people have already been victimized by identity thieves and hackers who are able to either gather information from your Facebook account to make you a victim of identity theft or induce you to download keystroke logging malware that steals all of the personal information from your computer including your Social Security number, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, passwords and other information that leads to your becoming a victim of identity theft.

TIPS

There is nothing you can do to totally guarantee that you will not become a victim of identity theft, however, there are important and relatively easy steps that you can take to protect yourself from identity theft when using Facebook.  Don’t use your proper name for your account.  Don’t make it easy for an identity thief to see who you are.  Don’t list your real birth date.  This is another piece of information that can be exploited by an identity thief.  Never store your credit card number on Facebook or any other website for convenience.  This also makes it quite convenient for an identity thief to access your credit card if he or she hacks into Facebook or your account there.  Be careful about the amounts of what may appear to you to be innocuous information on your Facebook page.  Some of it can lead to the answers to your security questions on various accounts of yours.  Don’t befriend anyone who asks.  Among those new friends might be identity thieves.  Never click on links or downloads from your “friends” unless you have confirmed that both the message containing the link or download actually came from them as opposed to an hacker who has hijacked their account and  that the material being sent is secure.  Follow these steps and you will put a happy face on your Facebook page.