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Social media safety starts with controlling your digital footprint and protecting your accounts.
Social media safety starts with controlling your digital footprint and protecting your accounts.
This week, focus on minimizing your digital footprint and securing your social media accounts so that only you can gain access.
This week, focus on minimizing your digital footprint and securing your social media accounts so that only you can gain access.
Your Digital Footprint
Your Digital Footprint
Your digital footprint is the trail of information you leave online—including posts, photos, comments, and personal details—and it's permanent.
Remember that information you share online—even seemingly innocuous details—can be pieced together by bad actors to compromise your security, impersonate you, or use against you.
Minimizing Your Digital Footprint
Set your social media accounts private. If you do post publicly, be very intentional about what personal information you post.
Regularly review and manage your existing digital footprint by deleting old posts that have too much information or are no longer relevant.
Don't share personal details like birthdates, phone numbers, or addresses on your account. Bad actors know that people often use personal information as the basis for their passwords.
Keeping Your Social Accounts Safe
Stay vigilant for direct messaging scams, friend requests from suspicious accounts, and requests for personal or financial information through social channels.
Don't accept friend requests from people you don't know.
Use unique, strong passwords for each social media platform. Don't repeat or resuse passwords.
Disable location tracking on social media profiles.
Enable two-factor authentication on social media accounts whenever possible. This ensures that if a bad actor gets your password they can't automatically get into your account.
Report suspicious accounts and block users who seem malicious. If you do get a message or comment from a suspicious account, report the account and block the user.
Utilize Privacy Settings
Every major social media platform has privacy settings you can control to adjust the amount of information you share and the settings you use to connect your account.
The UK's National Cyber Security Center has a useful list of links that take you directly to information about each platform's privacy and security settings.
If Your Account Is Compromised
Odd posts. Spammy content. Links out to suspicious websites. Hacked social media accounts are a risk for both high-profile and smaller personal accounts. Regardless of your follower count, it’s important to know what you should do if a bad actor takes over your profile.
Immediately change your password. Choose one that’s not similar to any other passwords you use.
Contact the platform’s support team–they have processes in place to help confirm you are the legitimate account owner.
Review your past account activity and remove any unauthorized posts or information.
Alert your friends and contacts that your account may have been compromised so they don’t act on any content they saw on your account.
Check out some additional tools and resources.
Check out some additional tools and resources.
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