Happy New Year! Let's talk briefly about social media and online privacy/security.

We hope that you all had a great holiday season surrounded by family and friends. While our families are a little farther away from us than we'd like, we were still able to have friends over, or visit their places, and eat lots of good food (perhaps too much). With the new year comes lots of goals for some people. For some it's the gym and fitness...and this one always gets lots of attention (plenty of memery, too), as gym equipment across the world that might normally be available for those going after their religious morning pumps is now occupied by the hordes of these new year's resolutionaries inspired by beach-bod commercials and the quick-result promises of some fitness program or another. It's true...lots of us could benefit from focusing more on fitness (getting in a few miles, or just getting out for some fresh air and sunshine), but that's not what I wanted to talk about - at least, not now, anyway.

For today's blurb, I want to talk about social media and online privacy.

More and more often recently, I'm seeing friends and family complaining about their social media profiles being spoofed (where others use your profile photo and create a seemingly identical profile for nefarious purposes) and/or their social media accounts being "hacked" and taken over by someone else. Ever considered not using your face or a family portrait as your profile photo? Let's talk about a few ways that you can mitigate your own personal social media spilling too many beans about your...well...personal business.

In this example, and because this is the platform that I have experience with and the majority of my family uses, I will use Facebook. I know, I know...

"Facebook?! Only Boomers use that mess!!!"

Sure, sure...but a good chunk of us other folks use it, too, sometimes. Some of us even use a public-facing FB account to mirror our YouTube channels to increase exposure across different channels. Speaking of "channels," I want you to take a step back right now and think about how many social media accounts you have. Not just the ones that you have access to or frequently post to, either. All of them. They are all vectors through which folks, businesses, and government institutions can use to peer into your life's details that you might not want to scream so freely into the interwebs for all to see.

Some of us have LinkedIn. Others may be more on the hip side, sticking to the "Insta." Some of you really cutting edge free and open source types might be raving on Mastodon. YouTube, anyone? How about good ol' Facebook? That's the one that I'll lean on today...

When you use Facebook, are you using it mainly to "like," comment, and otherwise interact with posts that your friends are publishing? Are you posting yourself? Are you publicly sharing random pictures that feature feel-good quotes on them from unknown authors because it really jibes with your dreams of an uncluttered cabin in the woods surrounded by the warmth of family smiles and that wood burning fireplace while the snow falls outside?

1. If using an Android mobile device, click on your profile icon/photo in the top-right of the application.

2. Again, in the top-right on the next screen, you'll see a little gear icon. Click on that thing.

**On an iPhone, this menu can be accessed by clicking on the lower-right "menu" button, then scrolling to Settings and privacy, and then clicking on Settings. Here you'll see Profile locking and other options discussed below.**

From here, you can do a few things with regard to privacy. Do you see Profile Locking? 

When you lock your profile, only friends can see the photos, posts, and stories on your profile. Folks can still search for you and send friend requests, but your own individual profile will be made much more secure than it was before. Let's look around and see what else we can find...

In this photo directly below, we can see that I've changed the "Who can see your future posts" option to FRIENDS...and you can also limit the visibility of older posts. This can be a good idea if you've made so many previous public posts that you don't want to go back and edit each one individually.

 

 

 

Who needs to see your future posts? If you have a public-facing account that represents a business or other social media account, then by all means, post publicly. Your business or site wouldn't get much exposure otherwise, right? But what if this is your own personal account? Do you really want every single post going out there for the world to see - both on and off of Facebook?

 

 

 

In this photo below, under the Followers and public content option, you can make further tweaks regarding who can see what from your profile. I think it's a good idea to limit all of this...some of this only needs to be visible to you, while much of it is probably ok to set to friends.

 

 

Here's another one that I thought was good. Let's take a look at the below Profile details screen capture. There is no work experience, high school, college, hometown, or any other personally identifiable information. If you are concerned that others might be using this to build a profile on you, why not make it a barren wasteland, devoid of information?

 

 

Ah, tagging. We all love when friends tag us in those photos so that we can easily share them for all to see. But what if they are tagging you and their post is set to public? Now anyone seeing it knows where you were and what you were doing (maybe) at an approximate time and date. Under Profile and tagging, it might be a good idea to turn on Reviewing. This will alert you to anyone tagging you in their post or photos, and allow you to remove the tag or accept it before it posts on your own profile.

 

 

 

This below photo is one that I mentioned earlier, and it allows you to limit the visibility of all of those older posts en masse, without having to go back and do it individually, which could prove tedious if you've been posting for years or months.

 

 

The last one that I'll mention on this rant is the option to edit the way your name appears. I don't think that there is a limit to how many times you can swap the order of your first and last name, but I have a better idea. Did you know that you can change your name every 60 days? Let's suppose that your name is Michael Johnson. Why not shorten it to "Mike Johns" for better privacy? There are some rules when it comes to mixing characters from different languages, but generally speaking, you're free to not even use your real name...if that's your thing. 

Can you think of anything to add to the topic?

Hopefully this helps to at least get a few folks pointed in the right direction, more aware of their social media presence, with a better understanding of just how much data is out there for potentially unscrupulous entities or individuals to hoover up. 

 

Happy New Year - and see you on the next one. Cheers.