Social Media
Online communities have existed since the invention of the internet, and give people around the world the opportunity to connect, communicate and share. Although these networks are a great way to promote social interaction and bring people together, that have a dark side - there are some serious Privacy Concerns with Social Networking Services, and these social networking sites are owned by private corporations, and that they make their money by collecting data about individuals and selling that data on, often to third party advertisers. Secure your account, lock down your privacy settings, but know that even after doing so, all data intentionally and non-intentionally uploaded is effectively public. If possible, avoid using conventional social media networks.
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| Done? | Advice | Level | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
Essential | Social media profiles get stolen or taken over all too often. To protect your account: use a unique and strong password, and enable 2-factor authentication. | ||
Essential | Most social networks allow you to control your privacy settings. Ensure that you are comfortable with what data you are currently exposing and to whom. | ||
Essential | There are still numerous methods of viewing a users 'private' content across many social networks. Therefore, before uploading, posting or commenting on anything, think "Would I mind if this was totally public?" | ||
Essential | Pretty much every post, comment, photo etc is being continuously backed up by a myriad of third-party services, who archive this data and make it indexable and publicly available almost forever. | ||
Essential | Profile information creates a goldmine of info for hackers, the kind of data that helps them personalize phishing scams. Avoid sharing too much detail (DoB, Hometown, School etc). | ||
Essential | Status updates, comments, check-ins and media can unintentionally reveal a lot more than you intended them to. This is especially relevant to photos and videos, which may show things in the background. | ||
Essential | Posting your real email address or mobile number, gives hackers, trolls and spammers more munition to use against you, and can also allow separate aliases, profiles or data points to be connected. | ||
Essential | By default many of the popular social networking apps will ask for permission to access your contacts, call log, location, messaging history etc. If they don’t need this access, don’t grant it. | ||
Essential | Avoid signing up for accounts using a Social Network login, revoke access to social apps you no longer use. | ||
Essential | If you plan to share any content that reveals a location, then wait until you have left that place. This is particularly important when you are taking a trip, at a restaurant, campus, hotel/resort, public building or airport. | ||
Optional | Most smartphones and some cameras automatically attach a comprehensive set of additional data (called EXIF data) to each photograph. Remove this data before uploading. | ||
Advanced | Tools like Fawkes can be used to very subtly, slightly change the structure of faces within photos in a way that is imperceptible by humans, but will prevent facial recognition systems from being able to recognize a given face. | ||
Advanced | Even if you yourself never use social media, there is always going to be others who are not as careful, and could reveal your location. | ||
Advanced | If you just want to read, and do not intend on posting too much- consider using an alias name, and false contact details. | ||
Advanced | Social media is fundamentally un-private, so for maximum online security and privacy, avoid using any mainstream social networks. |