The NetMediaBlog

Private Life: Tuning Your Social Media Life Out to Strangers

By 23 Comments

Social Media Life: It seems like today everyone is a in a great hurry to expose their personal lives online. Social Media like Facebook provide what is essentially an online forum for public revelation. In order to enter many sites you must reveal your email address, and then there are cookies, not to mention viruses and malware attempting to acquire your private information. How can we possibly hope to protect our private lives from such a surge of informational theft? If it were truly conceivable in today’s fully-connected world it would be best to never get online.  Otherwise, consider some prudent precautions.

Tuning Your Social Media Life Out to Strangers

Browse through your Browser

Unless you carefully examine what your browser is doing, it could be sharing information and you don’t know about. Search your setup, options or preferences menu and remove any mention of your name. Anything that personally identifies you, remove it or replace it with false information, including your email address.

Remember you can always provide accurate information on sites that you trust, but don’t allow your browser to share this information without your knowledge. And be sure you can trust your Internet provider.

Must Read: Importance of Social Media Monitoring

You Don’t Know what’s in that Cookie

“Cookies” may seem innocuous, but you can’t trust that these bits of information stored on your computer are always safe.  True, many are harmless, but some cookies are actually little data miners out to track what you do on the Web. They can track where you go and which ads you click on and then sell this information to third parties.

Fortunately, most browsers can be set to notify you before saving a cookie.  If cookies go to other sites or are not temporary, they shouldn’t be trusted.  You can also to set this feature to block all cookies that are sent to third parties, or simply block all cookies completely.  A final option to consider is using cookie management software programs or services.

Must Read: Top 10 Social Media Networks for 2012

Real and Throw-away E-mail Accounts

If you post with unknown quantities: mailing lists, newsgroups or chat rooms, consider using a “throw-away” email account. You can pick yourself up an extra email address from Yahoo or Gmail and use it as a throw away account. Share your real account with those you trust. This won’t only protect your private information from falling into the hands of strangers, it will make managing your email a lot easier.

Must Read: Tips to Measure Your Brand’s Social Media ROI

Final Advice

There are many other steps you can take to keep your private information from leaking outside your computer. You may also want to remember:

  • Never reveal personal information to strangers or “friends” you’ve met online.
  • Never use your personal email when dealing with mailing lists
  • When at work you might be monitored. Be sensitive about what you disclose about yourself. Keep your personal, sensitive files on your home computer.
  • Avoid sites that offer prizes or rewards for your personal contact information or details.
  • Never reply to spam email – EVER!
  • When possible use encryption.

The Internet has opened a Pandora’s Box of exciting new ventures and possibilities, but along with those beneficial opportunities are a host of possible negative results.  Be careful and protect yourself and family while online.

Other Posts You May Like...

Comments

  1. Hello, I’ve read about Facebook that “Facebook traces the information about what are you browsing when you are logged in on your Facebook account”. Is that real?

    Cool post! It is really important to save our privacy from strangers.

    Thanks for your advice to save our privacy!

  3. Hi Andrew,
    You are right . Nowadays Internet is full of bad people . These life less people target kids online . As they are easy to convince and reveal information easily . We need to take precautions just like you said .

    Regards,
    Navneet

  4. OH MY GOD!!
    That post was an eye opener for me!
    I will certainly have to be very careful. You’re right in pointing out that sharing personal information and data with people you dont trust is not a very sensible idea.
    Better to be safe than to be sorry!
    Thanks for sharing this, Andrew. :)

  5. Cookies are created every time you login to a website and some of those cookies live for long on our computer, they gather our browsing behavior and if it falls into a wrong hand could be used to hack our account.

  11. Truly appreciate the ‘Final Advice’ section of your post. It is well worth to follow them.

    Facebook and other social media, as they are gaining more popularity, they’ve been more prone to risking your privacy and security. I remember one of my female friend messaged me ‘kind of vulgar message’. I knew she was not that kind of girl. I understood it immediately and suggested her to change the Facebook password and remove all of the permissions she’d granted. But the hardest thing was that she does not know what is Facebook permissions and how she can enable or disable them.

    So some awareness and education about these social networks is necessary. You did a good job by offering your contribution in this sector.

  12. Hi Nwosu,
    Even if there are many of us who are already adept at using computers, there are many who still don’t realize that they are sharing a lot of private information without their knowledge online. I agree with the throw-away email account creation. Only share your real account to persons you trust fully. For those you don’t really know, using a separate email that you won’t mind losing in the future will suffice. I think one way to keep protected is to always update your password especially for the accounts that involve money (credit cards/online shopping/purchases at stores that you usually don’t buy from). You’ll never know that your old password can be easily broken, so it’s better to be safe and always update your password(s).
    Thanks for sharing! :)

  15. Hey Nwosu,
    Well needed post for all i would like to convey that once my gmail account been hacked and its been sent junk mail for all my friends after retrieval method i just got back my account because many clients contact details and other important documents have been saved on my drive one more important thing facebook founder Mark account also been hacked and his personal photos has been shared.Small advice for all fellow members make sure to share your email with trusted people just follow the steps which been mentioned on this post

  21. Yah… You are right Bro.
    I have personally seen a serious case. Which was just created after revealing personal information to unauthorized person.

  22. You make some great points here Andrew. Social sharing is fun but remember the flip side of the equation; you do open yourself up to potential privacy issues.

    I communicate with trusted emails and NEVER ever reply to spam. I see internet pros get duped from time to time, and I have to admit, the financial spammers who mimic banks or paypal, they are pretty darn good at piquing your internet, right?

    Thanks for sharing!

  23. Thanks Ryan for your contribution and yes i agree with you that we should be careful while revealing our private information online to strangers.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Find Us on Facebook

Recent Comments