Social media is the place where you share a lot of your personal information to other people online, particularly to people that you don’t know in real life. Many people use the social media platforms on the daily basis, and they use it to share various moments that they have in real life. It can be in a form of status, message, photo, video, and so on. Also, it is important to note that many apps and web services allow their users to link their social media accounts in order to access such apps and services more easily.
The problem with social media is that because it is the place where people share so much personal information, it is also the place for bad people to find their victims. There are lots of victims in real-life crimes where the perpetrators extract the information about their victims from their social media interactions or posts. This of course makes it very dangerous for your online privacy. If you are a social media user, be sure to protect your online privacy as much as possible. Here are 5 social media preference settings you need to turn on to protect your online privacy:
1. Prevent Search Engines From Indexing Your Social Media Account
Getting your social media posts indexed by the search engines is a huge risk for your online privacy. It’s simply because once your posts are indexed, it will be very difficult for you to remove these posts from the search engines. It means that when it is available in the search engine, people can access is easily without having to be connected with you on social media. This is why you have to turn on the settings to hide your posts from the search engine. Let your posts stay where it belongs, which is on your social media account.
2. Prevent Others From Accessing Your Personal Information
Unless you are a public figure like a celebrity, businessman, or a political figure, you shouldn’t let anyone access your personal information on social media. This is because anyone can use such personal and private information for their own benefit without your consent. When you are creating an account on Facebook, for instance, you have to ensure that the “About You” section is available only for you, not other people. Other people can know more about you from the posts that you publish on your feed.
3. Prevent Non Followers Or Friends From Accessing Your Account
Again, unless you are some kind of popular person, you should protect your social media feed from irrelevant people. In other words, you need to prevent anyone from accessing your account without your permission. Only your followers or friends can access your account and see your feed. You have to make your account private if you want to protect your online privacy. By doing this, you will minimize the risk of unscrupulous people trying to learn more about you and stalking your activity in real life. This can be dangerous for your safety whether online or in real life.
4. Prevent Any Mobile Applications From Accessing Your Account
The good thing about social media platforms is that not only they are accessible through your desktop browser, they can also be accessed through your mobile device. Unfortunately, since most people use their social media accounts via their mobile device, there are often discrepancies in the amount of information that they share via mobile applications and the regular social media websites. Sometimes, other third-party applications on your mobile device might require you to link your social media accounts, which can be used to extract your personal information. You should prevent these third party apps on your mobile device from accessing your social media accounts.
5. Prevent Any Linking With Other Apps And Services
You should review what apps or web services are linked with your social media accounts right now because it can be very risky for your online privacy. This is because not all third party apps and services are trustworthy. It means that you have to ensure that these apps and services are trustworthy before you allow them to access your personal information. It is better to prevent these third party services and apps from linking with your account, and instead, you can log into these third party apps using your email and password.
Those are the preference settings on social media that you need to turn on if you want to protect your online privacy. Remember that it is always a good practice to keep your social media activity at a minimum and avoid sharing any personal or sensitive information in your account. Also, it is better for you to always use the private connection whenever you access your social media accounts to avoid any type of third-party monitoring that can be dangerous for your online privacy.