Step 4 - Safety
Sharing too much personal information on your social media channels is not wise – if you have not yet tried the iDEA Safe Online badge it is well worth doing to learn more about how crooks can use information you share for criminal intent.
You can control who can see what on a social network; some posts may be for everybody, others for friends, and still others for only very good friends or members of your family.
Can you identify the dangers of using Social Media at a personal level? From the options below, click on all the situations you believe denote some risk:
Make sure you set a strong, secure password.
If you use social media apps on any mobile devices, make sure you set a passcode to protect your device. If you don't know how to do this, use a search engine to find out how. You can do this by using search terms such as "password protect" and entering the information about your device type and model.
Don't feel you have to accept all 'friend' requests. Be selective. If you don’t know the person, don’t accept their request - it could be a fake account, or it could be someone who means to cause you harm.
Try to avoid publishing any personal information about yourself such as your date of birth, where you live, or your phone number. You should consider this on your profile as well as in your posts.
Learn about the privacy policies of the social media channels you use and set the privacy settings to control who can see what.
Think before you post. If you wouldn’t say it or do it in public, don’t post it online. If you think it's something you would not like someone saying to you, don't post it online. If you think it might be breaking any laws or causing harm to anyone, including yourself, don't post it online.
Try to avoid using your social media accounts in "public hotspots". Most social networking sites don’t have a secure login (you can tell if they do because there will be the letters "https" at the start of the link to the site). If you use a public hotspot, your username and password could be stolen by criminals who use these to steal data which is not secure.
Be very careful about what you click. Hackers will often post links in comments to try and trick you into clicking them – they can then cause you lots of problems. Only click when you see trusted sources.
It is a good idea if possible to protect your device by installing antivirus software. This is a specialist way of ensuring you are as secure as possible.
Always ensure that your browser, operating system, and software are up to date. If you need to uninstall and reinstall browsers then that is better than using an outdated version.
Be careful of third-party apps. Games, quizzes and polls are often used across social networking websites, but by signing up to these you may be giving the companies who run them permission to access your information or profile. You can use the privacy settings of your social networking website to avoid this.
