How You Can Easily Reclaim Your Privacy on Facebook
Thanks to Randall Deich—a professional developer, educator, and a LinkedIn friend of mine—readers of this blog post will be able to take full advantage of a very useful privacy tool made specifically for their Facebook privacy settings.
The tool is essentially an all-in-one privacy scanner designed to point out any loose-ends that you may have in your Facebook privacy settings. The great thing about it is not only does it show you the vulnerabilities in your privacy settings, but it directs you to the exact page where you can fix them.
The privacy scanner was made by a small company called ReclaimPrivacy.org, which is aptly named given the usefulness of this tool.
I put the scanner to the test on my own Facebook profile, and I have to say, I was surprised at how user-friendly it was. Nevertheless, here’s a step-by-step guide on how to properly use it:
- Go to Facebook and log in.
- In a new tab, go to this website and drag the
to your browser’s bookmarks.
- Now go back to your Facebook profile and click the bookmark that you just created.
- The scanner will scan your privacy settings and display them above the header.
- Obviously anything scanned “green” is fine the way it is, and anything “red” deserves your attention as a possible threat to your privacy.
- Clicking on the button corresponding to the flagged (red) settings will lead you to the page where you can make the necessary changes.
So there you go. Like I said, this is a super useful tool and I not only encourage you to use it yourselves, but I encourage you to share it with everyone you know who’s on Facebook.
UPDATE: Because of the recent changes made to Facebook’s privacy settings, the scanner may not work 100% properly right now. However, ReclaimPrivacy.org posted on their Facebook wall that they started the updating process on May 27th and that it should be up and running in no time.
Mary Kay is a nationally-recognized Internet safety expert and the founder of 
