Facebook Privacy Risks and How to Protect Yourself
This paper examines the privacy risks associated with using Facebook, weighing them against the platform's personal and professional benefits. It discusses how employers use social media screening, how public posts can expose users to theft or stalking, and how oversharing can harm legal proceedings such as custody disputes. The paper then outlines concrete strategies users can adopt to reduce their exposure, including retroactive privacy controls, location-sharing limits, curated friends lists, and restricting searchability by contact information. The paper concludes that while Facebook offers genuine value, all users — regardless of profession — should approach the platform with deliberate awareness of their audience and privacy settings.
- Introduction: Weighing the Costs and Benefits of Facebook: Framing Facebook use as a personal cost-benefit decision
- Professional Risks of Facebook Use: Employer screening, networking benefits, and workplace exposure
- Personal and Physical Safety Risks: Stalking, theft, and unintended location disclosure
- Summary of Real-World Consequences: Legal, reputational, and safety consequences of oversharing
- Approaches Developed to Address Risks: Four privacy strategies to limit Facebook exposure
- Conclusion: Balanced takeaway on responsible Facebook participation
✍️ How to write this paper — guide, tools & examples ▾
What makes this paper effective
- Organizes a broad topic logically by first establishing risks across professional and personal domains, then pivoting to concrete, actionable solutions — a clear problem-solution structure that guides the reader naturally.
- Uses specific cited statistics (e.g., 500% increase in Facebook candidate screening) to ground its claims in evidence rather than relying on opinion alone.
- Balances the argument by acknowledging Facebook's legitimate benefits alongside its risks, which prevents the paper from reading as one-sided advocacy and strengthens its credibility.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper effectively integrates direct quotations from journalistic and industry sources to support each privacy tip, blending paraphrase with citation. This technique — using third-party voices as corroboration rather than as the primary argument — keeps the student's own analytical voice in control while meeting citation requirements.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a cost-benefit framing of Facebook use, then moves through professional risks, personal safety risks, and reputational consequences. A clearly labeled section titled "Approaches Developed to Address Risks" enumerates four specific mitigation strategies (retroactive privacy controls, limiting check-ins, curating friends lists, and restricting searchability). A brief conclusion ties the argument back to the opening theme of audience awareness. The structure is linear and accessible, suitable for an introductory undergraduate audience.
Introduction: Weighing the Costs and Benefits of Facebook
When contemplating using Facebook, users must engage in a cost-benefit analysis. This analysis will be different for every individual on both a personal and professional level. Even for individuals who are not concerned about incurring major risks to their personal and professional security, the constant temptation of accessing online social networking sites can be a drain upon their time and mental stability. For others, the concern that their friends may be judging them based upon their posts — particularly in a heightened and polarized political climate — may be disconcerting. On the other hand, Facebook does provide an easy way to remain connected to individuals that a poster might not otherwise be in contact with, including old school friends and people with similar interests living far away.
Professional Risks of Facebook Use
The main professional concern for Facebook users is that something a prospective or current employer might disagree with may be seen, even if their settings are set to private for friends only. An employer might try to solicit a user's password to vet a prospective employee's social media account, and even without a password, employers can still screen public posts in which users have been unwittingly tagged by friends. According to McDonnell (2016), the use of Facebook screening of candidates for employment has increased 500% over the past decade. Even apparently innocuous posts — such as employees drinking in social settings — can cast a negative impression.
On the other hand, using Facebook to network by engaging on the pages of professional associations can be extremely useful to job-seekers or current employees. Many employees must also post on their employer's own Facebook pages. While arguably they could simply confine their posting to those pages, social media savvy and fluency is a learned skill. Someone who eschews social media throughout his or her life can be less adept at generating engagement, potentially damaging their prospects in media, marketing, and advertising careers.
On a more practical level, posting on Facebook about a trip — or simply posting a great deal in general — can alert an employer that a sick day or personal day was actually taken as a vacation day, or that an employee is posting during work hours.
Personal and Physical Safety Risks
Facebook can also be a tool for thieves to monitor. When someone checks into a restaurant or movie, it signals that the individual is out for the evening and that no one is home. As O'Donnell (2017, par. 13) warns, "Some Facebook apps that share your location may have more relaxed privacy settings than you are comfortable with and may be blabbing your location without you realizing it." Stalkers can similarly learn about an individual's behavior patterns, as can an ex-partner who wishes to use evidence of irresponsible behavior in a court of law.
Approaches Developed to Address Risks
First and foremost, making not only current posts private but all past posts private is vitally important. This is achieved by selecting "Limit Past Posts." As Titcomb (2017, par. 2) explains, "It's a move that's not easily undone, so you'll be asked to confirm that you want your posts made more private." When a user is new to Facebook and still learning how to use the application, he or she may have inadvertently made public posts containing personal information. Retroactive privacy controls undo this mistake.
A second way to limit privacy exposure is to restrict check-ins to different places. This limits the amount of location data made public to other web users. Unlike some other types of online sharing, check-ins are relatively minor posts that convey little relational information. They do, however, reveal immediate temporal and spatial information about the poster — details that can be useful to someone with bad intentions. Moreover, people can still tag individuals and make their location known through their own check-ins. While it is possible to delete these posts from one's own timeline or to prevent people from posting on one's timeline altogether, the information may still be visible elsewhere on Facebook. To address this, users are advised to "Turn on the Tag Review and Post Review features so that you can decide what gets posted about you before a post goes live" (O'Donnell, 2017, par. 2).
It is also important to carefully curate different friends lists. While limiting posts to friends is one solution, further limiting posts to certain lists of friends provides more secure protections. O'Donnell (2017, par. 13) recommends creating "a list of your most trusted friends and set your privacy settings to allow more access for trusted friends and highly limited access to acquaintances who might end up being stalkers," or to simply limit information seen by professional versus personal acquaintances. This allows users to share more intimate material — such as political opinions, information about controversial artists, or off-color humor — that may be appropriate for certain friends only. Even then, this approach must be handled with care, since friends can always screenshot such posts and share them publicly.
To further limit the ability of people outside of an immediate network to search for a user by name, it is also possible to restrict the ability to be found via email address or phone number on Facebook. As Titcomb (2017, par. 8) notes, a user "can also select whether friends, friends of friends, or everyone can find you with your email and phone number." Although this will not necessarily prevent a potential employer from locating a prospective job candidate entirely, it can limit such exposure to some degree. It is worth noting, however, that some candidates may actually wish to use their established social media presence to demonstrate their ability to function effectively in a marketing role — not all candidates in all fields of employment need to conceal their Facebook presence.
Conclusion
Facebook is a potentially beneficial tool for personal and professional satisfaction, but like all tools it must be handled with care to ensure it remains useful. Sharing some things can be beneficial and generate meaningful social connections. Facebook allows users to participate in both personal and professional networking. But a user must always be cognizant of who his or her audience might be. For some users, the perceived and real risks of using Facebook may seem too great, and they may ultimately choose not to participate in the widely used online community; for other users, the benefits may be substantial. Even people in relatively liberal and understanding professions with like-minded friends should think twice about making too many posts public. Big Brother may not always be watching, but someone is always watching when a person posts something online — particularly on social media.
References
Fox-Brewster, T. (2016). Facebook is playing games with your privacy and there is nothing you can do about it. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/06/29/facebook-location-tracking-friend-games/#3eb4d26c35f9
Giang, V. (2012). Is it legal for employers to check Facebook? Business Insider. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/is-it-legal-for-employers-to-check-facebook-2012-3
Hern, A. (2016). Facebook is chipping away at privacy and my profile has been exposed. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/29/facebook-privacy-secret-profile-exposed
McDonnell, A. (2016). 60% of employers are peeking into candidates' social media profiles. Career Builder. Retrieved from https://www.careerbuilder.com/advice/60-of-employers-are-peeking-into-candidates-social-media-profiles
O'Donnell, A. (2017). The dangers of Facebook oversharing. Lifewire. Retrieved from https://www.lifewire.com/dangers-of-facebook-oversharing-2487777
Titcomb, J. (2016). Five ways you can change your Facebook profile to take your privacy back. The Telegraph. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/03/18/five-tricks-to-take-back-your-privacy-on-facebook/
Create your account
Always verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.