Online Security – Social Media Upkeep

Profile settings on Social Media accounts become stale over time

Review sharing and privacy settings for all social media accounts at least annually.

Pew Research found 69% of all US adults use at least one social media site. While most of us grew up without it, it dominates social interaction for the nation’s and much of the world’s youth. There is at least one famous senior citizen who formerly used social media daily to communicate worldwide!

Social media passwords are valuable to crooks, because the contents of your social media accounts may give away much more about you than scammers could find out with regular searches. Even worse, the scammer who’s inside your social media account can use it to trick your friends and family, too, so you’re not just putting yourself at risk by losing control of the account.

Social media applications offer privacy controls to determine who can view what content, what can be shared and what not. Spend some time on each application/site to set the privacy settings to what you’re comfortable with and review them at least annually.

Posting personal data may not just expose the person, but also expose a person’s family. Parents can reveal children’s names, ages and dates of births from birthday messages, home addresses, place of birth, mother’s maiden name, schools, names of pets and favorite sports teams and photographs. Way down the road, these details, which may still be available when children are adults, could be used for identity theft. So, it’s prudent to inform kids early on about what’s being put online about them.

FOR FURTHER READING:
CyberGuardian: a SecureTheVillage Guide for Residents is available on Amazon.
A complete Security Checklist is available: https://www.nerdsiview.com/security-checklist-2/
References for Village Residents are available at SECURE THE VILLAGE: https://securethevillage.org/residents

Supplemental Articles:
http://www.pewresearch.org/topics/social-media/ 
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/08/23/instagram-phishing-uses-2fa-as-a-lure/