Social Network Safety

It seems every day we are hear­ing that suc­cess is all about our “social net­work” and that social net­work­ing, whether it’s Twit­ter, Face­book, Google+, Linkedin etc., is where the action is.  Of course with any­thing we do online there are risks and dan­gers.   Is the infor­ma­tion we share safe?  How much infor­ma­tion is too much infor­ma­tion?  How do we pro­tect our­selves? Here are some safe­ty tips  to con­sid­er.

Whether it’s  Face­book, Google+ or anoth­er social net­work, it’s impor­tant to check your data pro­tec­tion set­tings. Think about which data can be seen by your friends list, and which data is pub­licly avail­able. Expe­ri­ence has shown that peo­ple are quick to add large num­bers of users to their friends’ lists, poten­tial­ly giv­ing access to your pho­tos and oth­er posts to com­plete strangers.

Be sure to con­sid­er which func­tions of social net­work­ing sites leave you vul­ner­a­ble.  Ser­vices, for exam­ple, which auto­mat­i­cal­ly pub­lish your cur­rent loca­tion should be treat­ed with cau­tion. The com­bi­na­tion of your cur­rent loca­tion and your oth­er con­tact info makes you trace­able in real life. Not only does this ‘ser­vice’ expose your cur­rent loca­tion in real time, it expos­es where you are NOT.   Post­ing on your sta­tus that you are on vaca­tion is anoth­er prob­lem.  Your home could now be vul­ner­a­ble to a break in,  you have just announced on line that it’s prob­a­bly unoc­cu­pied.

Note that the oper­a­tors of social net­work­ing sites don’t ver­i­fy the iden­ti­ty of users.  Con­se­quent­ly we need to wary of “friend requests” .  Using a well cho­sen ques­tion to con­firm the person’s iden­ti­ty before accept­ing the request, may be good pro­tec­tion tool to pre­vent hack­ers from gain­ing access to an account.

Pro­tect­ing your own iden­ti­ty helps pre­vent crim­i­nals from cre­at­ing fraud­u­lent pro­files to black­mail vic­tims. ID theft can be car­ried out by phish­ing meth­ods to col­lect pass­words for exist­ing user accounts.  Keep your secu­ri­ty set­tings and anti-virus soft­ware up to date.

Virus­es and Tro­jans like the koob­face worm use social net­work­ing sites to dis­trib­ute them­selves. In such cas­es users get fake invi­ta­tions from a friend to a view an album or link.  Click­ing a link can result in your PC being infect­ed with mal­ware.   Be very cau­tious about what links etc., you click or accept. Note that many spe­cial Apps and games on social net­work sites require you to relin­quish your pri­va­cy and safe­ty set­tings.   Think long and hard about whether it’s worth the risk to view a link that might poten­tial­ly be infect­ed with a mal­ware or iden­ti­ty steal­ing tech­nol­o­gy.

Pri­va­cy and iden­ti­ty are extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to restore once stolen.  Con­se­quent­ly take every pos­si­ble step to pro­tect your­self.  Many social net­work sites are very slow to respond to per­son­al requests for assis­tance.   Rule of thumb is to always err on the side of cau­tion when on Social Media Sites and the net in gen­er­al.