By Steve Schwaid, CJ&N VP of Digital Strategies

As the Facebook privacy story unfolds, viewers and users are searching for more information. Not how it happened, but what can they do right now to protect their privacy and information on Facebook.

We can’t get the “stolen” data back. That’s already in the hands of marketers, political campaigns and numerous other places you don’t want it to be.  But there are things your viewers and users can do to protect their Facebook data going forward. You might consider a story for air and a step-by-step guide on your site to help users secure Facebook data.

It is amazing how seamlessly we have allowed Facebook to access  our profile, to gather data about ourselves, our friends and family, and alert marketers to the type of content in which we’re interested. We even tell them when we’re traveling.  There are more than 214 million Facebook accounts in the United States and it appears at least 50 million of those accounts were part of the latest Facebook/Cambridge Analytica data issue.

The following article gives great detail on how to tweak Facebook privacy tools:

https://venturebeat.com/2018/03/19/how-to-opt-out-of-facebooks-platform-data-sharing/

Go to Facebook>Setting & Privacy>Account Settings>Apps>logged in with Facebook. Instead of creating a new account for the app, users can click “use my Facebook log in.” In many (if not most) cases, the app is gathering data from you and possibly your friends.  Facebook sells the data and those who create the apps gather data as you use the app.

If you want to see how Facebook tracks your habits for marketers, go to Facebook>Setting & Privacy>Account Settings>Ads. Scroll through the various items. Depending what you allowed Facebook to share, they may know an awful lot about you – possibly more than many of your friends.

Facebook privacy is a hot issue.  Chances are, it’s going to get hotter.

Personal safety and security has always been a high interest topic for viewers. This is a perfect opportunity for stations to help and show users how to protect themselves.