Social Media: How Can You Stay Safe?
Social media is used by just about everyone in today’s world, and while there are many benefits, there can also be some security risks.
Whether you use social media for your own personal profile, blogs or collection of inspiration or to promote your business, social media is also a great place to harvest personal information for attackers. Information is as valuable to attackers as money so it’s a good idea to know how to protect yourself and your business when using these platforms.
While it’s tempting to post updates and share everything you’re up to with your friends on social media, oversharing is one of the leading causes of identity theft. There are some things that you should be wary of before you post on social media and what details about yourself, your family, and your friends you are giving away, that might have unwanted consequences. These include your full date of birth, your email or physical address, your phone number, financial information such as credit card details, where your children go to school and their birthdays or your current location. Posting holiday pics is best left to when you get back from holiday as well.
Fun games and quizzes are made by all sorts of people and collect information about you and can often provide details related to your security questions or can be used in attempts at identity theft and fraud. How scary is that? It’s best to refrain from sharing these types of quizzes or encouraging your friends to complete them. The more games, groups, and pages you like or belong to increases your digital footprint so choose wisely and limit your exposure where possible.
As horrible as it might seem, upwards of 2million children have their identities stolen each year. Limiting what you share about them online helps to protect them and their future and it’s a good idea to consider their privacy as well as your own before posting. Most social media have age restrictions meaning you must be over the age of 13years to have a profile in an effort to keep kids safe.
It’s a good idea to check with other people in your photos and make sure they are ok with them being posted on social media sites and adding tags to images or posts. If you upload photos taken on a mobile phone, it is a good idea to check your camera settings and make sure geographical recording is switched off so the time, date and located are not embedded into the photo’s metadata.
There are a few simple ways your can best secure your social media profile, starting with a long, unique password as your first line of defence. The longer the password, the harder it is to crack and making sure you don’t re-use your passwords anywhere else can prevent attackers gaining access to multiple accounts. To add another access layer, we recommend that you enable Multi-Factor Authentication, sometimes known as MFA or 2FA. You can set this up using an authenticator application or SMS messages depending on your preference. It is a secondary code that you are asked to enter when you log in to your social media account, and without this code attackers will not be able to complete the log in and you will be notified of an attempt.
Your Privacy Settings determine who can see your profile, your content and what they are able to interact with on your profile. Making your profile “Private” means that only those who you accept as a connection are able to view what’s on your profile and its also a good idea to turn off discoverability by Google search. Make sure you only accept connections from people you know and trust, as they will be able to view all your information.
Angler Phishing is a type of social engineering or phishing attack associated with social media and their private messaging platforms. A common tactic is to send a link, photo or video with a message tempting the user to click such as “Is this you?” These attacks are used to attempt to phish large numbers of users, in hopes that some will take the bait. If they are clicked, they will often redirect the user to a login page where their credentials can be stolen and give the attacker access to their profile and all their connections to spread further phishing attempts. Sometimes once the username and password is entered, the user will be redirected to advertisements with to-good-to-be-true deals as a secondary attack to steal credit card information if they make a purchase. The best rule is if in doubt, don’t click!
Social media sites are like communities where we can look out for each other. If you see something suspicious, you can contact the business page owner, or the individual affected by some alternative means of communication like phone, email, text message or via their website. If this isn’t an option or you think you may be targeted by malicious behaviours, all social media platforms have an option where these pages and behaviours can be reported and brought to their attention to be dealt with.