This article discusses some simple, easy to follow steps to increase your personal security on Facebook.

1. Golden Rule - Assume that the personal information and photos you display are publicly available and now just available to specific friends.
2. Strong Passwords - It may seem obvious but make sure you use a strong password for your account. Also, I’d suggest not using that password you use for everything else, you know what I’m talking about.
3. Secure your birth date - Birth dates are often required to validate our identity. Under Profile, you can choose to not display your birthday or alternatively you can choose not to display your year of birth.
4. Privacy Profile Settings - We suggest setting the Profile Privacy > Basic to “only me” for items: Education Info, Work Info and Profile Privacy > Contact Information to “no one” for items: Mobile Phone, Land Phone, Current Address, Email. You may want to display your website address for advertising.
5. Privacy Application Settings - Each Facebook application has similar settings to those of the Privacy settings. New applications are being added everyday. Its difficult to define a set policy. However, we suggest you remove any unwanted applications and/or limit there settings as required.
6. Privacy Search Settings - Depending on your use of Facebook, you may not want to be publicly visible or you may want to limit what information is available to all users (i.e. your picture, friend list etc). We recommend changing the search settings from “everyone” to “friends of friends”. You may also want to untick “view your friends list”.
7. Privacy News Feed and Mini-Feed Settings - Control what stories about you get published to your profile and to your friends’ News Feeds. You may not want to display information such as joined groups etc. Although, I don’t know how much privacy this offers as friends can view your groups anyway.
8. Joining Groups & Networks - be cautious when joining groups. All users of a group will be permitted to see your profile data. Although, there may be a setting somewhere that restricts this as I did find some accounts that I could not access.