At first glance, the concept of Odnoklassniki seems at odds with privacy. Its very openness is what makes this social network so attractive to nosy parkers. Therefore, it’s important to be especially careful when setting up privacy.
Profile openness
It is possible to close your profile to everyone except friends (though it costs a fee in local virtual currency). This will provide a certain level of privacy and protect your data from prying eyes. But that won’t help classmates and colleagues find you, which is the whole point (after all, Odnoklassniki in Russian means “classmates”). You will have to look for them yourself and hope that they are less minded about security.
Shifting your risks to others is a very pragmatic option. And once you’ve found your school group or military unit, you’re pretty much done with the searching. New users find it themselves, and the main purpose of the social network is achieved without too much data spilling into the public domain.
We also advise you to keep your page off search engines and email services. There is generally no benefit to be had from them.
Data visibility
Odnoklassniki lets you set the visibility of any type of data separately. This provides the perfect balance between privacy and convenience.
Remember that if you allow everyone to view your groups and communities, it will not be difficult for an outsider to guess which school you graduated from, which regiment you served in, etc., even if the profile itself is private. So think carefully about what to make public and what not.
A good choice is to only allow friends to view your feed. Why let outsiders see what you’re talking about with school or college buddies?
And be sure to hide your other half from prying eyes. This will protect both your privacy and theirs.
Your photos
You already know to take care when posting personal photos. This is especially true if you use Odnoklassniki for its intended purpose of finding the people that fate decreed would enter your life. Therefore, share pictures only with friends.
And it’s better simply to block the option to tag others in your photos. You don’t know how your friends might react to this — it’s possible they won’t be delighted by such publicity.
You can also enable the option to see all photos in which someone tagged you. If you don’t like any of them, you will have time to ask the author to untag you.
Your activity
Odnoklassniki lets you see who’s online when you are, which can be a nuisance for those who use it at work. And there are many other reasons why you might want to remain invisible. Fortunately, this option can be disabled.
Two-factor authentication
Finally, be sure to protect your account with two-factor authentication.
And don’t add random people to your friends, otherwise they’ll be able to see everything you’ve been trying to hide from them.
Does Odnoklassniki offer two-factor authentication and should you use it?