Millions of people have multiple accounts in Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, just to name a few. The original purpose of social media which was getting social has now become more of corporate. But do you feel insecure while networking with people through social media. With the advent of location based services, we will see physical insecurity based on social media usage on the rise rather quickly.
Social media encourages:[/b][/b]
Lack of privacy
Delineation between personal and business
Encouraging information sharing beyond what is necessary
Giving away answers to security questions that help identify you in the financial world
Social engineering by using your personal information for nefarious purposes
What should be done?
Do not post your personal information on any of the social networking site. This is anti-social networking, but there are things you can limit about what you post.
Change your settings in such a way that you limit who can view your profile and contact you. Don’t make your personal profile public.
Social networking could also give those charged with protecting information the same toolset as those who are most effective at inflicting harm on organizations. By adopting social networking technologies it would be possible for security awareness to spread as fast as vulnerabilities in the wild.
You never know who is real and fake on any of the networking sites, hence do not trust anyone.
Personalize your privacy settings; there are options available to you on every social networking site so that you restrict who can view who can post and comment on your profile, pictures you upload etc.
Also see to it that you possess a strong password, in such a way that it isn’t easy for anyone to guess and one more thing please get rid of remember passwords if it isn’t your PC.
You should be running a personal firewall and antivirus software on the machine you are viewing social networks in. This will help if a malicious piece of software tries to download something to your machine.
Avoid posting your email in your profiles for everyone to see. It’s a very easy way to get on a spam list and once that happens you will never get off the list.
If you really want to keep your profile secure, stop the habit of adding friends just for the sake of increasing the list of friends in your friends list.
Social networking is mainly for finding old or making new friends. If you plan to connect with people you met for the first time through the site, you need to be extra careful. You could ask around about the person you are interested in through searching him or her, or have friends look him or her too.
Do not avoid the risks, but take measure to avoid it.
Monitor social media activities to ensure implementation of the said policies and procedures.
Be discreet
Do not forget to maintain updated security
Always delete messages
Lock your settings
Register your full name
Always log off social media sites
Cybercriminals know that we love to click on links that have been posted by a friend or someone we follow via social media. That’s why they are flooding social networks with malicious links designed to exploit your trust.
Hence try and avoid all such things that will exhibit your private info in public and take care of yourself at social media.