Social Media Privacy Settings

Privacy Settings on Social Media

Information that you post online can become permanent and can affect your reputation (click for section 2: managing your online reputation) well into the future. It is important to think about what you are comfortable sharing online vs. what information you would want to withhold. Here you will learn about how to set privacy settings that control that information.

Why?

Everything you share online becomes part of your digital footprint: photos, videos, comments you make on websites, and more. Much like real footprints, more information makes you easier to track. While the threat of omniscient predators lurking around every corner of the internet is overstated, it is important to take steps to protect any information about yourself that you do not want to be made widely available.

Most (if not all) social media companies are businesses, and therefore use your information in order to tailor advertisements to you or sometimes sell your information to third parties. Once you post on social media you are often not the "owner" of that content. Snapchat, for instance, saves all of your text, pictures, and videos on their server as well as any metadata (such as location information) that may be embedded within it.

Unless you would want that information available publicly, you should not share it on such a service (this does not even consider the fact that other users can also save or record your snaps). You should carefully review the privacy policy of every website for which you register, and use the privacy settings to only allow information you want to be shared to be available.

Location Services

"Location services" is the general term most smartphones use for apps being able to know your exact location. There are times when this is useful, such as when getting directions. But you probably do not want apps to be tracking your location at all times. In particular, social media stating where you are is generally unnecessary and potentially problematic. Consider which apps in your devices should have services turned on, but for most the answer should be off.

Geotagging

Do you know everyone you connect with on social media? How well do you know them?

Unless you have turned it off, every time you take a photo with your smartphone, the image is being geotagged. This means that additional information is being stored in the image, including the exact latitude and longitude it was taken at as well as the timestamp. When you post that photo to social media, you are inadvertently revealing the exact location the photo was taken - which could be your house.

While it was stated above that there are not predators around every corner, if you wouldn't post your home address on social media, your photos may be explicitly doing so. Over time the way to turn off geotagging will change with new OS releases, so it is best to perform an internet search on the best way to disable it. This link is from 2015, but provides a nice overview of what geotagging is before it gets into how to turn it off on android devices. It also talks about how to remove geotags from previously taken pictures. (This will not change previously uploaded photos, only the "originals" you may have saved on your personal computer, phone, or cloud storage.)

Wrap Up

Unfortunately, many of these companies have privacy policies which state they can be changed at any time without notice, so it is worthwhile to periodically "audit" (check) the services you use in terms of what information the company collects and how it uses it. You also should periodically check to make sure that the privacy settings are where you want them to be. Companies have been known to change user settings without warning, so rechecking them is important.

Where to find the privacy policies and settings for some popular social media are below. If an app or site you use isn't there, you can perform an internet search of the name of the social media and "privacy policy" or "privacy settings" to find the directions.