To Start With, What is Social Media Security?
The success of social media is something that can't be negated, they offer lots of benefits to people who want to communicate with friends or family members without wasting any money or simply are looking for some entertainment that can be obtained in sites like YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram, etc, sadly, all of this has a big problem, if there are more people with social media profiles, then there are going to be more cases of cyber bullying, stalkers and people who only want to destroy the life of someone.
However, there is something called "Social Media Security" which is, in simple terms, all the precautions that you as a person is going to have with the purpose of avoiding any of the previous problems that affect a lot of people in the current days, and the best part of it is the fact that you'll have a lot of ways to protect yourself against bad people that are looking for potential victims in social media, the only necessary thing to do, is following the next tips or strategies that professionals in online security recommends.
Avoid Unnecessary Personal Information on Social Media Profiles:
The main reason why people get attacked on the internet is posting a lot of personal information to the public eye, vital information like personal emails, details about your passwords, data of bank accounts or payment information shouldn't be exposed to everyone, because with that, you're going to be very vulnerable against scammers or stalkers that can track your house or get access to private information.
Social media like Instagram or Snapchat become famous for the main feature: photos and videos of people's life or routine, and this is something very dangerous to do for all the negative effects that those photos can have in your life, for example, you recently posted a photo about your new house or car, that is all the information that hackers need to track the street in which you're going to live, and that information can end in the hand of very bad people, so, make sure that you have more care in your photos and never reveal something important like locations or directions.
Do not Click on Strange Links:
Internet is full of different websites or blogs that you can visit to get information about something in specific, and you surely are going to find lots of strange links, it's very important to avoid them at any cost because they are the best way of getting your PC, phone or laptop infested of malware that can either destroy or reveal your data.
With the pass of the years, this has become one of the most common ways to get hacked for the way that these strange links works, one of the most common examples of this are the website that exclaims a message like "congratulations you have won a new phone, click on this link to see all the details" well, this is a very obvious Internet scam, however, some people end clicking on the link, which redirects them to a different site that can end downloading mysterious files that later transform into malware, and the result will be really bad, so, please never use this unknown links and never believe on what strange people say on social media.
Do not Answer Emails from Strange Accounts:
Our parents always told us that "we never should talk to strangers" well, this case is very similar, if, for any reason, an unknown person tries to establish any type of communication with you via email, you can do some things, first ignore them, no ones knows what is their motive and most importantly how they even get your email? So it's better to ignore the message, and if the stranger continues, then you should head to any police station and talk about your case, it can be a stalker of something much worse.
The second option is to look for information about the person or company who is trying to contact you, first, see the name of the person who wrote the email, then search him on sites like Spokeo that allows you to identify people by only inserting their name on the browser, depending on what you get, the decision is yours.
Make Sure to Close Your Profile:
In these actual days, social media offers you the possibility of "closing your profile" or go private, which is in simple terms, denying access to your posts or photos to any person that you are not friends with.
This is so useful when it comes to the protection of data because you decide who can see your post and that's wonderful. Another important action to take about closing your profile is when you're using any social media in a device that is not yours or in public PCs, no matter what, make sure that when you're done, end the session and never leave your profile open, if this is not done, then it's very probable that you become a victim of hackers which can result in various bad things like losing your account due to the change of the password.
Never Mention Locations or Directions of Important Places:
If the previous tips were important, then this is vital! It's impossible to tell all the possible things that a bad person can do with locations that are very close to you like the place where you and your parents live.
Avoid at any cost posting photos of location or hints of where you live because you can become a victim of blackmailing or stalking. There is no need to give such important data to unknown people in social media, however, you are free to do it if you have your profile protected or private, which means that only people close to you can see that information.
Sadly, this is one of the ways that stalkers attacks, they search for people who post their location in any social media to start their malevolous plan, make sure that you don't become one of those victims.
Use Spokeo while Shopping on Social Networks:
Interested in buying something on online stores that are not certified? Then you should use something that can provide you information about the owners or the sellers of the website, we're talking about Spokeo reverse phone lookup, with it you could know pretty much anything about a person that you don't even know by establishing a phone number search that works with only the phone number of the person that you'll like to know more and then.
Spokeo would search for the owner of that number, later with all the information that you have obtained, it's possible to determine if the person can be trusted or not, this way, you can feel more relaxed while shopping in not certified stores because, if you got scammed then you'll know about who's responsible for it to later take legal actions against that person.
