Social media has become a vital part of our lives. Every smartphone user has at least one social media app in his/her smartphone to promote business, stay in touch with friends or just to kill free time. However, due to our dependency over social media networks and growth in the worldwide internet usage in last few years, the graph of victims of social media attacks have increased at a significant level.
Although, you can control privacy settings on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and other platforms, whether or not you’re getting the best of your privacy settings is still questionable. Moreover, some users are conscious about their online privacy and share different viewpoints above the security offered by the giants. So, here are some hacks to boost your social media security and ensure that no one invades your privacy.
Manage Your Login Credentials
It is always recommended to use strong password that is a combination of alphanumeric and special characters. The password may also be set using your information instead of a regular and basic set of words. For example, your name, phone number and date of anniversary. Do remember that even a lengthy password without any uniqueness in it can be cracked within a few seconds. Attackers can install malware and virus on your device without you knowing it to gather your credentials information with keylogger attacks.
It is important that you don’t use same credentials for a long period of time or for the other social media accounts. If you set the same password for all the accounts, hackers may easily target all your accounts at once.
You can add an extra layer of security to your social media accounts by using two-factor authentication (2FA) option. It alerts you for all the new logins and helps you stop any suspicious activity.
Beware Of Suspicious Links
You get tons of links when you go through your Facebook and Twitter account. Some of them are from your friends and family members but there are a few links that you receiver from unknown sources. You should be extra careful while opening such email links and pages because it could be established for a clickjacking attack or other scam to harm you. You can directly connect to the websites by using the URL into the address bar instead of blindly following and clicking on the provided links.
Know Your Followers
Being friends with hundreds of people on social media accounts is nowadays status symbol. That’s the reason, some of the people accept requests of known people as well. Well, it is ok, if you’re a celebrity or model or when you use your social media account for business purposes. But, what about other people? You should be aware of the person you’re adding to your account or should have some surety that they won’t miss use the information.
Limit Your Comments
It is possible to decide who can comment and like the post you have uploaded/posted on the social media accounts. On Facebook, you can choose who can see your photos and profile photo, the same way you can limit your viewers on Instagram by turning the account into private. In fact, you can select block the groups and individual that are suspected to you from seeing and commenting on your pictures.
Avert Your Tracking
You get different promotional and advertising websites when you go through your social media platforms. This happens due to these media websites deploy tracking services to display personalized ads to you. These websites measure and use the intended algorithm that processes your interests and most visited pages. According to which, the next advt. to be shown is decided.
Limit Your Personal Info Visibility
Social media platforms are very popular among youth to know what is going on with your friends. It provides various ways you connect with people you like and admire. Besides sending a friend request and DMs, there are tons of other ways to connect with the same person as you get their phone numbers and email from the social media accounts.
Facebook and Instagram ask you to share your email address and contact information wherein your GPS location is also shared with others. Well, you protect your info by limiting the people who can see your personal information. You can also toggle off your GPS location to cut the options for others to contact you.
So, these are some of the various tips that can make social media security more robust and help you stay active towards privacy. Because compromising on your privacy might be risky and it may open doors for attackers to exploit your data for financial gain.