In the modern times of today everybody is using social media and nobody can deny the importance and benefits of it. This has made socialization very easy. Nowadays, anyone can stay connected to his friends and family members. They can find new friendships from all over the world. Through this facility, anyone can find communities of the same hobbies and interests.
No surprise but according to a few researchers even in the USA, 69% of nationals are using social media. These social media channels provide a lot of advantages. However, they also have some downsides, like privacy protection. It is always an issue and you can handle it tactfully.
Privacy Protection on Social Media
Privacy protection on social media is always the biggest concern of people who are using it. A stark reminder is a scandal that happened in 2018 in which 87 million Facebook user’s data was exposed. So, anyone can be conscious that his data like photos, location, and friends list must not be in the wrong hands.
An internet law expert Mr. Mark Grabowski says cybercrimes are growing and you will be a victim of it in your life if you have not victimized till yet.
While using social media on the internet a safety measure should be taken to avoid scams and hacking. It’s better to understand each and every platform that how your data is being used and should take necessary actions to safeguard your privacy. Protection of your digital world identity can be a little bit hefty.
Protection of Privacy on Social Media
Some Important Things Which a Social Media User Needs To Know
- When signup on a new social media is performed usually a profile with is created while providing data like full name, location, and email address. However, on some platforms, you are asked to get linked or connected to friends that are already that platform, from this type of data you are suggested to people having similar interests or matches.
- It is explained very well Privacy Rights Clearinghouse consumer privacy protections that in a non-profitable campaign user can post data like names and addresses which he desires to be accessible publically.
- Whereas users have only limited control over the information which is being used or shared over the internet, for example, if you are using Facebook and you tag him to a photo you this activity will see by your whole friend lists even those who are strangers to you.
- Normally advertisers collect information like your relationship status or your location to give adds of your interests, but the third party applications which do not belongs to social media like games, quizzes, and any other websites links will collect your data which can be used in a way which is not appropriate, also a social media user be well known to privacy policy of social media platforms so that user should
- Know what’s safe and what can go wrong.
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Dos and Don’ts for the Social Media
While interacting with social media a normal post like your relationship status, new shopping, location or views on something is something which is what spammers and hackers are looking for.
Data Or Privacy Breaches Can Be Minimized By Following These Simple Tips.
- Privacy policy – it looks not that important to someone but it’s a very important thing to do, always study and review the privacy policy of the portal being used by you like social media users. Always keep a check on how information is collected and used also its necessary to whom this information is being shared.
- Strong Password – As recommended by professionals and antivirus software designers agencies while selecting a password, go for complex and unique passwords for every account that is in use. This will be a lot difficult to crack and hack. A policy should be defined for change of password within or at least on the 90th
- Be careful when sharing data – any information that is sensitive like birthday, phone number, age, location, and relationship status. Your updated location can be troublesome to you if you are a famous personality or don’t want to be traced, so always remember to turn off the auto GPS location update.
- Manual Log in’s – To prevent your privacy on social media always do the manual login and select log out other devices if your device is lost or stolen. This will protect your data for going in the wrong hands.
- Accept connection request – while socializing people do connect with others by interacting and connecting with their friends and family. So when using social media try to add people in your contact list only whom you know already, because you don’t know the intentions of a stranger whom you are adding.
- Third-party Applications – as it’s an important thing to know that most of the third-party applications don’t have the same standard of privacy settings. So when using any third-party application be sure that what will happen if you share some of your important data to the third party application used.
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Social Media Accounts and Privacy
From the above discussion, it is clear that different social media platforms offer different privacy settings, here we will discuss top six social media privacy settings individually also we will let you know how to change them to protect your privacy.
Instagram Privacy Settings
One billion users are using Instagram worldwide
Facebook reported a large scale security breach in 2019 and it affected thousands of saved passwords.
How to Make Your Instagram Profile Private
In Instagram your photos and profile have the public privacy settings, if you want to change the privacy setting from public to private you may first go to settings and then go to privacy and security and here you will be able to select privacy settings for your posts.
But if you share some posts from Instagram to any other social media portal it will be displayed to the public until unless its privacy is changed to public.
Facebook Privacy Settings
Facebook is used with a count of 2.38 billion users worldwide.
July 2018 a large number of users were blocked to access their account and it was caused by a bug. Again just after two months a number of 50 million users got their profiles attacked by hackers.
Setting a Facebook to private settings
Facebook has now introduced many options if you want to set your page or profile to private settings. In facebook, even you can set privacy settings for even single post that you have shared and in facebook terminology, this is called the Audience.
In this term, these options are included.
- Public – in this setting every user can view this post even a person who is not registered to facebook.
- Friends – it’s one level above to public settings and this type of post will be shared with only your facebook friends.
- Custom – In this type of settings you can select to whom this post will be shared or to whom this post will be restricted.
- Only me – with this type of settings only the user itself will be able to see this post.
How to keep your facebook information, Private
When you share: when a post or something is shared on facebook a menu list is in front the post shared is available from this menu you can select your desired privacy settings. These settings will be saved and will remain as default settings until unless it’s been changed again. These settings will remain available even after sharing the post; also these settings can be changed for the posts that are shared previously.
General settings for profile: if you want to change the overall settings of your profile on facebook, first go to the settings and the privacy settings and here you will be provided with the options to set privacy for almost any personal data that is shared.
Timeline control: in facebook timeline settings you can control the posts that you are tagged and from settings you can go for the review of the post before it goes online.
Twitter Privacy Settings and Policy
Twitter is also very famous among social media users and it been used by almost 330 million users worldwide.
Twitter has faced a misshape in which 250K users accounts were hacked and lost their passwords and even hackers had access to their e-mail addresses
How to Make Twitter Profile Private
When you share a post on Twitter it’s called tweet in terms of this social media portal. However, by default, this is a public privacy setting. In this portal, you can protect and secure your tweets only your allowed and selected users. By doing this, they will be able to see and you can take the manual control for your tweets. Through this, you can raise the privacy level to a point that your tweets can’t be searched by others on twitter.
This needs a user to go to settings and privacy and then privacy and safety. You will find an option “protect your tweets” from here you can control the privacy of your tweets. Also here, you can change settings for your location and a review check if somebody tags you to the post.
Linkedin Settings for Privacy
A total of 610 million users are using Linkedin worldwide
In the year 2012, a data breach was faced by LinkedIn and this cased 6 million users to lose their passwords and this data was posted in hacker’s forum from Russia.
How to make LinkedIn Profile private:
On this portal, you have the liberty to choose different privacy settings for your posts and your information. You can do this activity in settings and privacy for your linked in profile.
Privacy Settings of LinkedIn
- In this social media, you can change how you will look when people search you on linked and how a non-LinkedIn user will see your profile.
- Even here you can show and hide the information like your email, phone number.
Snapchat Settings for Privacy and Policy
Snapchat has over 190 million users worldwide
An incident happened to Snapchat in which 4.6 million users data like usernames and phone numbers were compromised.
How to set Snapchat profile Private:
In this social media by default, all users added on Snapchat will be able to see your posts and will also have the permission to contact to. In Snapchat, you can change privacy settings, your stories, snaps, location, and other information. While using the option of Quick Add, modify the Snapchat profile settings easily.
Pinterest Privacy Policy
Pinterest social media has a total user of 250 million, this portal has not faced any major issue yet but a number of users have reported about misleading users to other websites
Pinterest Privacy Settings
In this social media privacy settings are by default. Pins are not visible to people if they are searched in search engines. If you want to hide your pins and only want a selected people to watch. You can set these settings in privacy control options. You can also turn off Data to avoid unwanted usages of posts and ads.
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