How to enhance your Facebook security… or delete your account

This Jan. 17, 2017, file photo shows a Facebook logo being displayed in a start-up companies gathering at Paris' Station F, in Paris. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

As Facebook takes heat for a major data leak that was allegedly used to manipulate U.S. voters, now’s probably a great time to tweak your account’s privacy settings -- or even take the bold step of permanently deleting your profile.

In the past, some of the most nefarious data harvesting from Facebook users has been executed via third-party Facebook-linked apps such as games, online personality tests or services like photo-sharing sites that require you to sign in using your Facebook account.

While apps generally can only collect information from Facebook users who sign up for them, they are still able to gather a significant amount of data from your account, such as your friend list, wall posts, likes and self-declared religious and political views. Luckily, Facebook makes it relatively easy to control exactly what type of data such apps have access to.

To do so:

If you haven’t done so already, to further enhance your account’s security you should also probably limit the audience of your posts and personal information to just your friends.

To do this:

If all of these steps are still leaving you feeling insecure, you can always make the bold move of permanently deleting your Facebook account.

But before you do that, you will probably want to download a copy of all of your Facebook data.

To do this:

Once you’ve downloaded a copy of your Facebook data, you’ll be ready to permanently delete your account.

To do so:

Facebook makes it much easier to temporarily deactivate your account through the ‘Manage Account’ tab on your ‘General’ settings page, but doing this will not remove your personal data from the social media site. This might be a good first step, though, if you want to see if you can live a Facebook-free life.

You can also toggle your Facebook privacy settings from your smartphone’s Facebook app, though it is much easier to take these steps from your computer.

With files from The Associated Press