Yesterday I posted about the real possibility of cybercriminals and spammers using Facebook’s upcoming “Graph Search” as a means to easily sort out and research potential targets. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, ever on the lookout for our privacy (even when we won’t do it ourselves), has put together an excellent guide on all the settings you should review in Facebook to make sure the data you want to be hidden from the general public stays that way.

What this means for you:

If you’ve ever taken a stroll (or even a dedicated walkthrough) of Facebook’s privacy settings, you probably gave it up for being unnecessary and complicated. Hopefully my previous article made you reconsider the “unnecessary” stance, and now EFF gives you a step-by-step guide to setting the privacy settings to what you want them to be. The only thing better would be having me sitting with you personally to go through each step and doing it for you. I could totally do that if you like, but while I was doing it, I’d be giving you a (possibly boring) lecture on why you should be learning how to do this for yourself, etc. Your privacy and security is important enough that you should understand exactly how Facebook shares your personal information. We are entering a period of time where getting duped by hackers is moving from nuisance to an actual threat on your livelihood and possibly even your personal safety, and the best defense is knowledge and preparedness.