Social media transformed from being a place where you connect to people from all around the world to watching influencers dance on TikTok. We must be honest with ourselves. Most of us spend hours doom-scrolling on social channels, flipping through apps, and consuming content. The apps seem fun and harmless until you realize what they’re doing in the background and how much information they have on you.
Social media is safe if you use it correctly, don’t get addicted, and take the necessary precautions before joining the digital space. Here are a few tips on how to be safe on social media.
Share As Little Information As You Can
There’s no limit on how much information you can share online. You can literally livestream your entire life, including your bathroom breaks, if you want to. Some people do weird things to get famous. However, the downside of becoming popular is the number of eyes looking at you. You can never know if a fan or a cybercriminal is staring at the screen on the other side of the camera.
If your posts are public, you’ll want to share as little personal information as possible. It’s cool to post when your favorite team wins the championship or a pic where you look classy at your friend’s wedding. But anything that includes pet names, relationships, addresses, and phone numbers shouldn’t be online.
Use Cybersecurity Tools
Most people don’t know a lot about cybersecurity. They just know that hackers exist, and they can somehow get into your phone, steal your money, or breach your Facebook account. And if your phone or computer gets hacked, there’s no alarm sounding off like when a criminal tries to steal your car. So you’re left clueless about what’s happening.
Cybersecurity tools are the alarm systems of the digital world. They will tell you if something is suspicious, whether a file is corrupted, and when to change your password. The best thing to do is get a full suite of five tools: VPN, password manager, firewall, anti-malware, and multi-factor authentication.
A password manager will help you remember all those strong passwords for every account. A firewall provides general protection against cyberattacks. An anti-malware program scans files for malicious code and viruses. A multi-factor authenticator keeps your accounts safe with an extra layer of protection before you log in. Lastly, a VPN keeps your IP hidden and secure. A VPN for TikTok is a must because it’s the app with the most security concerns.
Check The Privacy Settings
When it’s time to unwind, you just open up your favorite app and start scrolling and responding to messages. Probably, it never even comes to your mind to check the privacy settings on your account unless something weird happens. If you haven’t checked it in a while, it’s time to revisit the settings page and restrict your content so that only your friends can see it. Maybe that means switching your Instagram profile from public to private.
By default, social media apps want to extract as much information from you as possible. The default settings are permissive, which gives strangers (think potential cybercriminals) loads of insight into your life. They shouldn’t be able to see your pictures or know where you’re currently located. If you want to test this, try opening a new account on any social media platform. It won’t ask you about any privacy settings when you create it. You have to take matters into your own hands.
Watch Out From People You Don’t Know
Social media algorithms are geniuses. They know precisely what you like and serve that content in your feed. Let’s say you’re an avid dog lover. You’ll get so many pictures of cute dogs, and more often than not, you’ll want to like and comment. But if it’s from an account you don’t know, you should think twice before posting the comment. Here’s an example. You see a picture of a pup turning one, and the description asks when your birthday is. It’s a harmless question, so you answer it. However, a cyber attacker can use that information to breach your account (if you use your birthday as a security question or as your password).
One of the many negative sides of social media is the optimism bias. You think you’re not that important, so why would hackers want to target you? It would make sense for them to try and hack you if you had a billion-dollar company, but you’re just going to work and watch dog videos. What’s there to steal? The reality is that hackers are looking for your personal information (or even access to your bank account). By resisting the urge to comment (and to reply to random people in your DMs) your personal information, you can escape social engineering attacks coming your way.
Be Wary Of Scams
You may think everyone can notice the scam phishing email. You probably won’t fall for a scam call from a different country that randomly happens in the middle of the night via WhatsApp. Since your guard is up on the phone and at email, you might be a bit loose on social media, and you could fall for a scam. Say a random person with a lot of followers DMs you asking to become an influencer for their clothing brand. Wow! You never even thought of yourself as an influencer, but now you can promote cute dresses and get paid for it? It sounds like living the dream. All you have to do is submit a form. And that’s how they get you.
Similar things can happen when you talk to people you don’t know or add new friends. Catfishing occurs constantly, and you need to have your eyes wide open for every friend request that comes your way. Check your friends list constantly, and remove the people you don’t really know.
