How to navigate Facebook's privacy notifications and lock down your profile (FB)

Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook has started asking users to go through their settings and make sure they're happy with the amount of data they are handing over.

That's thanks to a new European law called the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, which comes into effect on May 25.

That law makes it much harder for companies like Facebook and Google to collect and make money from your data — especially without your explicit consent.

It also means Facebook can't access sensitive information like your sexual preferences, religious beliefs, and political beliefs without your proactive consent.

Now Facebook has to make sure you look at your settings before May 25 — or risk being fined 4% of its annual turnover, which represents billions of dollars.

Here's how to navigate those new settings and keep your data private.

1. If you use Facebook in Europe, you will probably see this notification pop up. It's hard to miss.

2. The notification looks dry as dust — but there's one big update Facebook is trying to push on European users: Facial recognition.

Facebook's ability to recognise people's faces in photos to make tagging easier hasn't been available in Europe since 2012. Now it's introducing facial recognition by stealth, according to critics.

But more on that later.