The Weekly Facebook Privacy Monitoring Program: Make sure that your privacy settings stay where you set them!

The only safe way to use Facebook is to exercise extreme caution and to trust no one. Every time that a new feature comes up, your privacy is usually compromised without your knowing it.

Many sites are now requiring access to your Facebook account in order to access the site's features. Do not allow them to manipulate you into giving full access to your Facebook information.

Facebook can get hold of your GPS location and use it to tell anyone and everyone where you go. Facebook will make your image available to anyone in the world. Avoid any "check in" applications at Facebook or anywhere else that required Facebook connections.

Facebook offers a comprehensive help section for managing and protecting privacy, but some of the privacy features are not exactly easy to find or work with. This article will help you through the maze.

Start your privacy protection program at Facebook by limiting your personal information when registering.

Set up a separate e-mail account and use it to register at Facebook.

Do not give your real birth date, your street address or your phone number.

If you can, use your screen name for your registration name.

These steps will help to keep wrongdoers from calling you or finding out where you live.

If you have already given up your phone number and street address, delete that information. Then check to see that it stays deleted. Facebook may have cached the information and may still be selling or releasing it. The alternative is to close the account and to start a new account.

Do not tag photos. Facebook has a facial recognition feature that allows anyone to find you by using your image. If you have tagged photos, then put up photos of animals, pets and plants and tag them too. This might confuse the very creepy facial recognition system.

Deleting existing photos may not help, since they are cached and can be used anyway. The final option is to Kill the account and start over with vastly more care when you put up photos.

Be brief and restrict the background and personal information when you set up your profile. Leave out the details about your workplace or your school. Block anything that identifies your usual hangouts.

If you will be friending people who you do not know, don't be free with the personal revelations. Existing family and friends already know you, so avoid giving up your privacy for the world to see.

Remember that Facebook has facial recognition applications that allow others to locate people by using smart phone gps systems.

Do not ever put up another person's photo without their permission. Do not ever give another person's real phone number, address, or work location.

Even if it is a family member or the boss, flag and report the person who releases your address, phone and other potential dangerous personal information without your approval.

Avoid logging in either to known or unfamiliar sites with your Facebook log in. Doing so will usually allow those sites to override your privacy settings and to get full access to your account.

This is a basic guide for doing a weekly check of your privacy settings. A weekly check will ensure that settings were not changed, and will allow you to customize the settings for maximum safety.

Click on Account==>privacy settings. Examine the overall privacy settings. These determine who can see various parts of your Facebook account.

At the bottom of this page, you will see three items:

Apps and Websites: Go through all of the sections and see what settings have been arranged for apps, games and websites. When new site features, apps or games are added, Facebook opens up everything as a default, so learn how to disable any unwanted apps and other features that open up access to your account.

Block Lists: This is how you can block game requests, apps, people and other features that keep bothering you.

Controlling How You Share: This is a comprehensive guide to the way in which all of the settings work. Read it and refer to it when needed.

Go back to the "Account" link at the upper right hand corner and click on "Account Settings". This opens up a big world of privacy management.

The Settings Tab: Go through all of the parts of this tab and explore.

Click on "Account Security" and check the first box for a secure HTTPS connection when you log in to Facebook. If you only use one computer, click on the second box to be notified if someone tried to access your account from an unrecognized computer. You will also see a detailed log of times when your account was accessed.

Click on "Notifications". Check the notifications boxes for "when someone tags you in a photo" or "tags one of your photos". Do the same for videos.

Click on "Mobile" and check to see if a phone was activated. If it was, delete and deactivate! The average person can use a smartphone app to access their own account, so there is no need to use a feature that can easily make your phone information accessible to the world!

When adding any smart phone or Facebook application, a warning will come up. The warning will describe the "permissions" that the feature or application will use.

Permissions give access to various parts of your smart phone or to various parts of your Facebook Account. Read the permissions carefully and decide whether excessive accesses are being granted. Is a game or a wallpaper worth complete access to your location and other personal information? No.

These permissions override your privacy settings and may even give full access to your Facebook or smart phone account. Understand that you cancel your Facebook privacy settings and can expose far too much smart phone access when the permissions that are way too excessive for a game or other fun application.

Pay attention to news articles and announcements about new Facebook features. Each new feature could open up your account to anyone. A combination of weekly privacy checks and staying up on new features is the best way to maintain solid privacy and security protections at Facebook.

Google the name of the new feature or Facebook initiative and set up Google and Yahoo alerts about "Facebook privacy problems" or other search terms.

Within a few days of a Facebook plot, some independent web analysts will publish warnings and solutions that Facebook does not really want you to know about.

Amazingly, Facebook has an excellent set of Help pages for maximizing your privacy. Most users simply do not want to take time to go through them.

Bookmark the Facebook blog, the Facebook Privacy Help Pages for the latest news and for a handy reference.