What Not to Share on Social Media Sites 

What Not to Share on Social Media Sites 

Social media is a dynamic and ever-evolving space that offers endless opportunities for connection and entertainment. However, with each new technological advancement comes the potential for new risks. Learn how to navigate social media safely and protect your personal identifying information while enjoying all it has to offer. 

Know What You Have Posted Online About Yourself 

A common way that hackers break into accounts is by clicking the “Forgot your password?” link on the account login page. To break into your account, they search for the answers to your security questions, such as your birthday, hometown, high school class, or mother’s middle name. If the site allows, make up your own password questions, and don’t draw them from personal details anyone could find with a quick search of your profile.  

Protect Your Personal Information 

Social networking means sharing information online with others, but there’s some information you should never share online.  

• Your social security number (including even just the last 4 digits) 

• Your birth date 

• Your home address 

• Your Personal phone number 

Meanwhile, protect all passwords, personal identification numbers (PINs), location you were born, bank account logins, and credit card information. These measures will help safeguard critical information that can be used to obtain identifying information. 

Do Not Post: 

• Upcoming travel plans – Sharing vacation details can alert others that your home will be empty, increasing the risk of burglary. 

• Valuable possessions – Avoid posting photos or videos of your home, car, or expensive items, as they can attract unwanted attention or make you a target for theft. 

• Personal information- including your Social Security number, birthday, the name of your high school, your pet’s name, your place of birth, home address, phone numbers, or personal account information. 

• Work history – Limit the details you share on LinkedIn. During a job search, you can expand your profile to highlight your experience, but once you’ve secured a position, scale it back to include only key information that maintains your professional appeal without oversharing. 

If in doubt, don’t post. Oversharing can give criminals the information they need for a scam. 

Assume that everything you put on a social networking site is permanent. Even if you can delete your account, anyone on the Internet can easily print photos or text or save images and videos. 

Avoid sharing personal information. Social networking sites make it easy to let details slip you wouldn’t otherwise share with strangers. Be aware of what information you put out there that others might use for identity theft. 

More Social Media Safety Tips 

• Use caution when you receive links in messages from your friends on your social media apps. Treat links in messages on these sites as you would a link in email messages and do not click on them. 

• Don’t trust the sender’s information in a message. Even if the message appears to come from a sender that you know and trust, use the same precautions that you would use with any other e-mail message.  

• Don’t trust that a message is really from who it says it’s from. Hackers can break into accounts and send messages that look like they’re from your friends. If you suspect that a message is fraudulent, use an alternate method to contact your friend to find out.  

• Avoid giving away the email addresses of your friends, do not allow social networking services to scan your email address book. When you join a new social network, you might receive an offer to enter your email address and password to find out if your contacts are on the network. The site might use this information to send email messages to everyone in your contact list or even anyone you’ve ever sent an email message to with that email address.  

• Always type the address of your social networking site directly into your browser. Create bookmarks or use official mobile apps. If you click a link to a site through email or another website, you might be entering your account name and password into a fake site where your personal information could be stolen.  

• Choose your social network carefully. Evaluate the site that you plan to use and make sure you understand the privacy policy.  

• Use privacy settings – The default settings on most social networking sites allow anyone to see your profile. Customize your settings to restrict access only to users you are know and are comfortable sharing that information with.  

• • Despite the use of privacy settings, there is still a risk your information could be compromised, so don’t post anything you wouldn’t want the public to see.  

• • Review your privacy settings periodically. Find out if the site monitors the content that people post. You will be providing personal information to this website, so use the same caution as you would with a website that you would add your credit card information to. 

• Be careful about installing anything extra on social media platforms. Many social networking sites allow you to download third-party applications that let you do more with your personal page. Criminals sometimes use these applications to steal your personal information.  

• • To download and use third-party applications safely: 

• • Use caution when deciding which apps to enable and take the same safety precautions you would take with any other program or file you download from the web.  

• • Modify your settings to limit the amount of information apps can access. 

• Talk to your kids about social networking. If you’re a parent of children who uses social networking sites be sure to discuss safe practices with your child. 

• Search for yourself. Do regular searches for yourself on a site such as Google. 

• Know where you show up and what information is readily available online about you.  

• View your social networking profiles as they appear to others and adjust your settings accordingly for privacy and security.  

• Set up a Google alert with your name which could point to suspicious information to alert you if someone else is using your identity online. 

• Customize privacy options. Social networking sites increasingly give users more control over their own privacy settings.  

• Don’t rely on the default settings the site gives you.  Check out the settings, configuration, and privacy sections to see what options you can use to limit who and what groups can see various aspects of your personal information. 

• Don’t trust, just verify. There are many reasons why someone might impersonate or falsify an identity online.  

It is important to verify that the page belongs to who you think it does before sharing too much information or clicking on links.  

Start by being on the lookout for anything unusual or out of the ordinary.  

If the content on the site doesn’t look like or sound like the person you know, avoid it. Contact your friend to verify the site is legitimate. Not only are you keeping yourself safe, but you could be helping your friend verify if their identity has been stolen 

Forget the popularity contest. Put a number on something and suddenly you have a competition. The person with the most “friends” isn’t necessarily the winner in social networking unless of course you are running for president, or you are in some type of recruiting, sales or media business. That’s just more people, including possible strangers, who now have access to more of your information. It is best to only friend people who really are or have become your friends. Your personal information has less opportunity for misuse. If you do get an unsolicited invite to connect, check them out first and try to figure out why you know them or if you even do at all. 

Create a smaller social network. There are more social networks than Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.  

Self-forming communities often form around very narrow topics, and these can easily get lost on the bigger sites. You may be better served to create a smaller, more focused network using tools aimed at communicating with smaller groups. By using tools appropriate for smaller groups, you can keep unwanted solicitations, applications, and spam to a minimum. You may also find you build closer relationships with community members. 

Social Media at Work 

•  Find out if your company has a policy about visiting certain web sites using your corporate network. It is best practice not to log into your personal accounts on a work computer. 

•  Use your personal e-mail address when signing up for social networking sites, not your company e-mail address. 

•  Use caution when you click links that you receive in messages from your friends on your social networking site.  

•  Treat links in messages on these sites as you would links in e-mail messages. 

•  Be choosy about who you accept as a “friend” on a social network. Identity thieves may create fake profiles in order to get information from you. This is known as social engineering. 

•  Be careful about the information you reveal about your workplace or company on your social networking site. (This is a good rule to follow for blogs too.)