Nobody wants to fall victim to an identity thief – it’s a horrible experience that can bankrupt you and make your credit bad for years after you’ve actually managed to rid yourself of the problem. We’re all aware that it’s an increasing problem, but very few of us are taking the appropriate steps to make sure we don’t fall victim. How much do you reveal about yourself on Facebook, for example, without ever worrying who is able to read it?

Why Is Facebook A Problem When It Comes To Identity Theft?

We tend to let people know where we’re working, where we went to school, who we’re involved in a relationship with and who we are related to – and that’s just in our profiles. On a daily basis, many of us post updates that include reference to our hobbies, pastimes, travels, buying habits and a myriad of other details that give an identity thief more than enough information to begin to piece together a picture of us that will eventually allow them to guess enough of our details to access our financial, shopping and personal accounts. Protecting yourself from identity thieves on Facebook is almost more important than on any other website out there.

How Do I Protect Myself From Identity Theft On Facebook?

For a start, you want to make sure that your settings on Facebook are properly secured, ensuring that anyone you don’t know or haven’t given access to is not able to read your status updates or browse your personal data. There are numerous settings to look at now that Facebook has become such a powerful tool, so you’ll want to browse through all of your settings.
Even with your privacy ensured, you’ll still want to make sure that you don’t give too much away without meaning to when you post updates. Be careful not to include too much contact or personal information.

Finally, you’ll want to make sure an intrepid identity thief can’t access your account another way – by intercepting your data as you use your computer, particularly in a public place, and gaining access to your passwords. You can do this by using a VPN service, which protects your privacy online and encrypts all the data you send back and forth such that no identity thief will ever be able to make sense of it and use it to access your Facebook account. To help you get going with this part, we asked our experts to put together a list of the most secure VPN providers available – you’ll find them in our comparison tables below.

Rank	Provider	Starting Price	MoneyBack	Visit Website
	ExpressVPN	$6.67/month	30 Days
2	VyprVPN	$14.95/month	7 Days
3	IPVanish	$10.00/month	7 Days
4	Hidemyass	$6.55/month	30 Days
5	StrongVPN	$21/ 3 Months	7 Days