By Robert E. Calem for Techlicious

Facebook’s Biggest Privacy Threat May Be You

There have been numerous stories circulating about how Facebook and other social media websites invade our privacy, selling our personal information to advertisers who in turn target us in our own personal spaces online. But the truth is, many privacy risks lie much closer to home. In fact, two of the biggest live in your home—you and your spouse.

A new investigation by Consumer Reports into data collection and privacy on Facebook, conducted last January as part of the magazine’s annual State of the Net Survey––the results of which are now published in CR’s June issue—concludes that many of us are undermining our own privacy in the digital realm by revealing too much information about ourselves and not using the security options Facebook offers.

Among CR’s key findings are that only 37 percent of Facebook users have used the site’s privacy tools to control how much of their personal information is visible to apps, leaving this information available for any friend’s app to surreptitiously access and share. And perhaps more risky, CR found, many millions of Facebook users have openly and actively revealed personal information about themselves during the past 12 months:

*39.3 million identified a family member in a profile
*20.4 million included their birth dates and years in their profiles
*7.7 million “Like” a Facebook page pertaining to a religious affiliation

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This post is excerpted with permission from Techlicious.

About Techlicious

Techlicious was founded by consumer tech guru, Suzanne Kantra, Techlicious is your daily scoop on everything from the best new mobile phones and apps to holiday shopping guides to step-by-step instructions for protecting your privacy on the Internet.

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