Social media has become a primary source to stay connected. It keeps us updated about the latest happenings, trends, someone’s whereabouts, and more. However, social media plays a crucial role in fetching information about everything we want. Unfortunately, some users try to harm others’ privacy and security. This blog post is all about how to stay safe on social media.
Tips For Staying Safe On Social Media
If you own a social media account, you must have gone through hacking or tracking attempts once in a lifetime, right? If this is the case, then we have got you covered here.
Following safety tips will help you enhance the privacy & security of your social media accounts.
Update Your Privacy Setting
Updating your privacy settings on social media is essential! Ensure that your personal information, such as phone number and email address, is hidden from the public. Limit your content visibility to “friends” or “friends of friends” only. When it comes to Twitter, make sure to uncheck the “Discoverability box“, as it will prevent email addresses and phone numbers from being tracked.
Post Anything Wisely
Whether you have a private account or it’s for the public, think wisely before posting anything, as your data can be used to analyze your surfing behavior, and it can end up getting spam messages and phishing attempts.
Your Data Is Scattered All Around the Internet
Social media is all about sharing! Hence, think twice before sharing any information about your social media handles. It has been observed that some advertisers use data from social media accounts for their advertising campaigns. To protect your data, we suggest you delete all of your social media accounts that are not in your use anymore.
Identify the Fakes
You can be tricked on social media with fake identities. This means that anyone on social media can create a fake account while stealing someone else’s data. For example, in some case studies, we found that people were tricked into disclosing their personal information with fake accounts.
Clean Up Your Friend List
Sometimes, we accidentally hit the friend request button on random profiles and add them to our contact list. If you have just useless profiles in your friend list, then make sure to clean them up from your friend list.
Block Anyone Who Bothers You
Harassment has become common on social media. But you have options on any social media account to block the person who threatens your privacy. You can even set them on the mute option, which makes them believe that you are no longer receiving their messages and posts.
Protect Your Identity
Social media is not safe to share sensitive data about you. You shouldn’t share information like your phone number, address, bank details, or other personal information online. Hackers or phishing websites can penetrate your account to access your personal information.
Let Your Friends and Family Know About Your Online Choices
Social media privacy is interconnected, meaning you must respect others’ privacy and security the same way you expect from others. Make your preferences about sharing and posting on social media. Let your friends and family know whether they should tag your location or not.
Watch Out for Suspicious Messages
If you receive a message from an anonymous person, check out their URL structure. Some fake accounts are made using short URLs that you should not trust. If you receive any phishing email that contains compelling content to sign into your account, then before taking any action, search the source name in Google to find out whether the source is credible or not.
Conclusion
Preventing your social media from potential security and privacy threats has become essential in the present time. For this, we suggest you keep a check on what you share on social media, remove useless profiles from your friend list, and protect your social media handles with a robust password management system.
