Social media has become something everybody uses in at least one form or another. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and many others are used by several million people every day, often several times per day. While some may argue that social media allows us to actually become more socially disconnected from each other, the fact is that enough people use it, for both personal and professional reasons, to make it highly profitable for the social media companies.
Social Media: The Communication Enabler
Facebook, for example, is a site that people can keep up with their school friends, coworkers, and extended families. It allows grandparents to see pictures and various status updates that their grandchildren post and feel like they are somewhat part of their lives. Long-lost friends can find each other and reconnect. People are able to keep up on the daily events in each others’ lives where they might have otherwise simply lost touch.
Twitter is a fantastic means of keeping up with the latest happenings in your area of interest. Whether that means you want to know how traffic is in your city, the latest developments in the tech industry, or simply wish to follow other people’s “insightful” thoughts. It can give all these thing to you like drinking water from a fire hose. It is a non-stop stream up information updates.
LinkedIn has become a business-oriented social network where professionals across a multitude of industries can connect and network with each other and be found by recruiters and companies who might be looking for talent. It can be a good source of information about what is happening in your industry and is a fantastic way of tracking what various companies are doing.
Social Media Security Afterthoughts
It has long been understood that people feel that they have a certain level of anonymity on the Internet. Along with that, people who post information on the Internet do not always understand to whom that information might be available and how it can be used.
Two federal laws, HIPAA and the Privacy Act, both have definitions for what they call personally identifiable information. These laws do not necessarily apply to individuals using social media, but they define this information and mandate its protection for very good reasons. In short, this is information that can be used to identify specific individuals and can be used for identity theft and fraud. This information includes specific items, like your social security number, but also combined information such as your name and address, education history, email address, personal telephone number, where you have lived in the past, and several other similarly personal bits of information.
It is probably safe to say that most people would not simply post their social security number on social media. What you can easily find simply listed in people’s profiles and shared in random surveys is work history, education history, emails, all the places someone has lived, and so on. Think about it for just a second. How many people can there possibly be in this world who have the same name as you, went to the same high school as you did, lived in all the same towns as you, and worked at the same companies as you? I’d wager a bet that there is only one: you.
Moreover, websites frequently ask similar security questions just in case you forget your password. Questions such as who was your childhood best friend? What street did you grow up on? What is your mother’s maiden name? What is the name of your favorite pet? These are asked because these are things that a stranger shouldn’t normally know about you. These are also common questions asked of people to fill in and forward around social media in the form of “fun” surveys. Every person on your friends list can see the answers you post to these surveys. Do you know for a fact who every person on your friends list is? If so, do you know for a fact that their accounts haven’t been take over by a fraudster?
Cisco’s 2016 Annual Security Report states that social media is a system of choice for fraudsters and hackers. Because of people’s voluntary oversharing of sensitive information, social engineers do not have to try very hard to obtain valuable information that they can use for gaining access to personal accounts, credit card fraud, and even identity theft. Social media is also becoming a tool for stalkers and burglars to find people and know when they are away from home, according to AdWeek. Malware can is also easily spread through ads and apps on social media sites.
9 Tips to Safe Social Media Usage
- Update your security settings to ensure only your friends can see your posts.
- Do not share your personal information, ever. This includes sharing “fun details” about yourself, your family, or your interests in surveys or other posts. Keep these to yourself because they can be used to identify you.
- Do not ever post your email or telephone number.
- Keep personal details, such as your school, employer, and etc. to a minimum in your profile.
- Do not post pictures that include your vehicle license plate number, you driver’s license, business licenses, certifications, or other items that have unique identification numbers on them.
- Only use trusted and verified apps.
- Do not post places that you frequent, such as your Friday night watering hole.
- Do not post real time location updates. Save it for later and only share the main attraction, not how you came to arrive there.
- Do not post when and for how long you are out of town. A post that you are at the airport waiting for your plane indicates that you most certainly won’t be home any time soon. Save the travel updates and photos for after you have safely arrived back home.
