Secure.me your Facebook page (pt. 2)

OK, we've discussed the first two sections of Secure.me. Before jumping into the third section, I thought I would post links to a couple of reviews I found online. The first one is from the Secure.me website and provides a primer on how Secure.me works. It also provides some interesting statistics on their analysis of 500,000 social media apps. The statistics alone should give you cause for concern. The second one is a blog written by a mother who expresses her concerns about online stalkers and the need to protect her children. Needless to say, she uses Secure.me to monitor her children's facebook profiles.

3. Threat summary
On the left hand column, Secure.me displays your threat summary. The number is orange next to 'Summary' is the total number of threats over the time period you set (see '2. Scan now' below) found by the scan process. The total is broken down into the 5 different areas I described previously. As you can see, in my particular case, I have a total of 232 potential threats of which 201 are due to photos. And these are the threats found over the previous 7 days only. (I dread to think what Secure.me will find if I perform a scan back to 2007!)

1. Photos
Go ahead and click on the 'Photos' tab located at the left hand column. Secure.me will open a new page providing a summary of all the photos scanned at the top part of the page. Directly below are the images you have uploaded, and directly below that are the pictures your friends have uploaded. See image below. Again, right click the image and select 'Open image in new tab' to view the full sized image in a new tab.



Photo Analysis Section

At the bottom of the screen, turn the photo monitoring option (red box) to 'ON' by clicking the button.

Read the page carefully. It says a total of 2693 images have been scanned. Of these, 1020 are the total number of photos I have uploaded, of which 34 photos (the red box on the right) were scanned over the past week and the remaining 1673 images were uploaded/posted by friends. The number 1673 represents the photos/images posted by ALL my friends over the previous week, and out of those 1673 photos, I have been tagged or mentioned in 134 of them.

Right about now you're probably wondering, so what? Again, there may be unflattering photos of you which you would rather delete, especially if you're looking for a job, or your children may be posting pictures of themselves which you would rather not let the world see.

At present, you will have to review the pictures one by one as Secure.me does not have a feature that allows the user to select multiple photos at a the same time. However, they are working on offering this feature.

To summarize, if there are no pictures of you throwing up or urinating at the curb after an evening of bacchanalian revelry, you probably have nothing to worry about. Nonetheless, it's a feature that's useful to have.


2. Activities
The Activities section is where you check, not only all your status updates, shares, likes and comments, but those of your friends as well over the given scan period. Again, it allows you to check which wall posts are objectionable. The right column displays the number of daily posts over the scan period. See image below (right click and open in a new tab).




Activities Analysis Section



3. Privacy Analysis
Now we're getting to the good stuff because this is were your personal information can be at risk. Take a look at the image below (right click and open in a new tab).



Privacy Analysis Section

This is the information you (in this case me) have on your profile page, stuff like date of birth and email on the top part, and Education, Work, Family, Religious beliefs and Relationship status on the bottom. As you can see, I have 5 possible threats (only the first 3 are shown) and score only 4 out of a possible 10. In other words, I should review the information I'm making public. Note the 3 red boxes on the left side and the 3 on the right side. On the left side, two of the boxes are POSSIBLE threats (text in yellow) and one is considered a HIGH threat (text in red). Click the text in these boxes or the "i" on the right side boxes to get an explanation of WHAT it means, WHY this profile entry is considered a threat and HOW you can correct the security settings of the information displayed. Observe that even if you make the appropriate changes as recommended by Secure.me, this page will continue to show this information as possible threats.

The important thing to take into account is to review and apply the appropriate measures recommended by Secure.me. This is called 'locking down' the security on your personal information. For some users, however, locking down their profiles isn't sufficient; they should be locked up...in a cell.


4. Profile Analysis
The profile analysis section pertains to the language recognition feature of Secure.me. As you can see, out of 679 posts appearing in my page in the past seven days, 20 have been found to have objectionable language (high-lighted in yellow), all of them from yours truly. In other words, I am, by nature, foul-mouthed and prone to use offensive to very offensive language. Despite the fact I tend to use foul language in excess, the mood of my posts is positive, thus the 10/10 profile analysis rank. Furthermore, the pie chart on the right column provides a breakdown of the source of the posts. In this case, I am the source of 99% of all the dirty language on my posts. But then again, I knew that already. See image below (right click and open in a new tab).



Profile Analysis Section



5. Network Analysis
Finally, we have the network analysis section which analyzes the language of your friend's posts appearing on your page. Similarly, by clicking on the yellow cautionary text after each post, Secure.me explains why these posts are threatening and what you can do about it if you are so inclined. Well, personally I am not so inclined to censure any posts or comments so it's a feature I don't really use. However, if you have little ones on Facebook, you may want to monitor the language of their friends.



Network Analysis Section

4. Privacy, Profile and Network Analysis
This topic has been covered at length in the previous section and needs no further explanation.

5. Secure ranking
This topic has also been covered in the previous section and needs no further explanation

And basically, that's it! Remember: Secure.me will not fix your Facebook security. It will point out potential weaknesses in your page and recommend fixes. If you still encounter problems, email me.

One last thing, I apologize for the layout of the blog - it's horrible. I'll have to do something about that.