Despite widespread paranoia about Internet security, people share a remarkable amount of sensitive personal information on their social networking profiles. Usually, this isn’t on purpose. Many people don’t fully understand how to tweak social media privacy settings to keep their information confidential.
Social Media Privacy Tips According to Network
With over 1.71 billion active users each month, Facebook is a breeding ground for hackers and scammers seeking unsuspecting victims. Keeping your profile under-the-radar and only adding friends you know personally is the best way to stay safe on the world’s most popular social network.
The Privacy Tab
Navigate to the Facebook privacy tab, which can be found by clicking the down arrow on the top right of your Facebook homepage. Under the “Who can see my stuff?” section, you can control who can view your future posts.
The “Limit the audience for posts you’ve shared” feature allows you to change the visibility of your past posts as well.
Under “Who can contact me?” you can specify whether you’d like to be sent friend requests by other users. The “Who can look me up?” section can be used to hide contact information like your email address and phone number.
Profile Settings
Go to your profile, and click “About.” Here, you’ll see fields for information such as work, education, places you’ve lived and more. Within each of these sections, you can choose who is able to view the information.
Photos
If you want to change the privacy setting of an individual photo, open it. Right beneath your name is an icon with a dropdown menu that allows you to edit the audience.
To change the visibility of an album, go to your photo albums page and click the icon on the bottom right of the album you’d like to edit. Adjust the audience accordingly.
Twitter has some of the simplest social media privacy settings out of any network. Either your account is private, or not.
Twitter accounts are public by default. To change yours to private, go to the settings menu by clicking the thumbnail of your photo in the top right section of the homepage. Click “Security and privacy,” then choose “Protect my tweets” and save the changes. Now, only people who follow you will be able to see your tweets.
There are several other options you can edit in this menu, such as discoverability and whether you want your tweets to display your location. They’re all straightforward and easy to manage.
Instagram also has very intuitive privacy settings. To hide your posts from the public, tap “Edit your profile” and tick the “Private Account” option. This way, only people who follow you will be able to see your posts. You will also be given the option to deny access to new people who want to follow you.
To change your privacy options on LinkedIn, mouse over the thumbnail of your profile photo on the top right and then click “Privacy & Settings.”
The choices are self-explanatory. Customize the settings to your level of comfort, then make sure you save your changes before navigating away.
Social media privacy is one of the most important cybersecurity measures, yet if often goes overlooked. Make sure you review your social profiles periodically to make sure you’re comfortable with the amount of information being shared.
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