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.

 

Secure.me your Facebook page (pt. 1)

With Facebook's new Graph Search capabilities, your profile page pictures and wall posts are more exposed than ever before. The New York Times recently wrote an article on several privacy tools users may find useful. So far, I've only tried Secure.me which I explain below.

Recently, lots of Facebook users have been posting privacy notices and the need to get expressed written consent for the use of their pictures or content. Out of fear, other users see the post and share it by copy/pasting it on their own walls causing the whole thing to go viral. While the post may sound legal, beguiling the user to think (erroneously) he or she is actually protected, these messages have no legal bearing whatsoever.

The worst part is, people don't even bother to check the veracity or authenticity of the message. They just simply assume that because it's being posted on Facebook, it must be true the same way chain emails are true. (If you don't forward this blog to 10 friends, the DPRK will nuke the US.) However, a quick check on Snopes.com will tell you all you need to know about the message you're posting. But if you still don't get it, College Humor has a video that will make you feel like a downright idiot. If you're still in doubt, just Google it and see the results.

So, stop posting useless, none binding legal notices and stop asking your Facebook friends to perform security tasks for you. Take responsibility for your own security. Secure.me is just one of many available free apps that can help you in this regard.

Secure.me
Let me start by saying Secure.me is a monitoring tool, it will NOT configure your privacy settings on Facebook; you still have to do that yourself. What Secure.me does is scan all your photos, activities (latest user activities, status updates, comments, likes, places and friends), privacy analysis (personal information), profile analysis (questionable language on wall posts) and network analysis (questionable language on your friend's posts), and then proceeds to give you an account summary of its findings. You may or may not care for the language analysis feature of Secure.me, but it's there for a reason. Job recruiters and HR personnel normally do Facebook background checks of potential employees. By minimizing objectionable language, candidates will have a more positive projection of themselves.

After you install Secure.me (I am assuming you know how to install a free app), go ahead and login. You should see the following screen. Right click the image and select 'Open image in new tab' from the contextual menu. A full size image will open in the new tab. I've boxed and labeled the sections 1 to 5 which are explained below.

Secure.me User Home Page

1. Automatic Monitoring
You can choose to have your Facebook page monitored 24/7 (ON) or you can manually scan your profile (OFF). If this is the first time you use Secure.me, change the setting to ON.

2. Scan Now
The first time you use Secure.me, the Automatic Monitoring option is set to OFF by default. Click the Scan Now button. After the scanning process is complete, which can take several minutes depending on the time frame option (7 days, 30 days, 90 days), set the Automatic Monitoring option to ON.

Below these two options is a graph of the results of the scan. And right below the graph, it displays a summary of the analysis of privacy issues as well as the state of your profile and your network. Each of these three topics gets a rating up to 10 points, with 10 being the best.

(cont'd. in pt. 2)