A wider circle of friends, risks

Social media is just one of the many ways consumers make themselves vulnerable to identity theft or computer viruses. Earlier this year, Consumer Reports surveyed 2,089 online households nationwide and found that one-third of them had experienced a malicious software infection in the previous year. Consumer Reports estimates that malware cost consumers $2.3 billion last year and forced them to replace 1.3 millions PCs.

Increasing dependence on mobile phones has also made consumers more susceptible to threats. Consumer Reports projects that millions of people jeopardize bank information, medical records, and other sensitive data by storing it on their cellphones.

Being social but safe ■ Monitor a child’s account. Parents should join their children’s circle of friends on Facebook. If that’s not feasible with an older teenager, keep tabs on them through their friends or siblings, as did 18 percent of parents surveyed who had 13- to 17-year-olds on Facebook. Parents should delete a preteen’s account or ask Facebook to do so by using its “report an underage child’’ form.

■ Use privacy controls. Roughly 1 in 5 active adult Facebook users said they hadn’t used Facebook’s privacy controls. Facebook’s privacy controls may not prevent every breach, but they help. Users should set everything they can to be accessible only to those on friend lists. Enabling a public search allows users’ profile picture, friends list, activities, and more to be visible outside of Facebook.

■ Turn off Instant Personalization. Facebook has been adding sites to its Instant Personalization feature, which automatically links accounts to user-review sites such as TripAdvisor (travel) and Yelp (local businesses). Users who don’t wish to share what cities they have visited with their Facebook friends via TripAdvisor should disable Instant Personalization, which is turned on by default.