Most scams, harassment and account takeovers start with information people shared without meaning to: a phone number, a home location, a child's school, a travel date. A few settings on each app close most of those gaps.
Settings, Privacy.
- Last seen and online, Profile photo, About, Status: set to My contacts. Strangers who get your number then see nothing.
- Groups: set Who can add me to groups to My contacts. This stops random scam and "investment" groups.
- Calls: turn on Silence unknown callers to send calls from unknown numbers straight to your call list without ringing.
- Privacy checkup at the top of the page walks through all of this.
Settings, Privacy Center or Privacy Checkup.
- Who can see your future posts: Friends.
- Limit past posts to Friends in one tap.
- Who can look you up using your phone number or email: Only me or Friends.
- Hide your friends list. Scammers clone accounts and message your friends.
- Remove your phone number, date of birth and home town from your public profile, or set them to Only me.
- Private account (Settings, Account privacy) if you do not need a public audience.
- Messages: control who can message you and who goes to message requests.
- Tags and mentions: approve tags manually.
- Activity status: off, if you do not want people seeing when you are online.
TikTok
- Private account under Settings, Privacy.
- Suggest your account to others: turn off contacts and Facebook friends if you do not want to be found by people who have your number.
- Direct messages: Friends only, or no one.
- Accounts for under-16s have stricter defaults. See keeping children safe online.
What not to post
- Photos of your Ghana Card, passport, bank card, boarding pass or a cheque, even partly covered. Blur them properly with the photo editing tool or do not post at all.
- That you are travelling or away from home, until you are back.
- Your children's school name or uniform in public posts.
- Photos taken at home can carry your exact location inside the file. Remove it with remove location from a photo before sending photos as files.
Check what the world sees
Facebook has View as on your profile (under the three dots) to see your profile as a stranger would. Search your own name and phone number on Google once in a while too.
Tools that help with this
Free, and they work inside your browser without uploading anything.