Staying safe on social media: Five things to keep in mind

The Internet is full of the dangers irresponsible social media usage can cause. Here, at Quick Heal, we have written at length about how social media is used to commit financial frauds and how you can check that your social media accounts are safe by answering a few questions.

For all the fear around social media, it’s important to remember that is as safe or dangerous as how you use it. Just like driving, if you follow some simple, basic precautions and be responsible, it’s perfectly possible to stay safe on social media from a plethora of threats.

Here are a few short and easy-to-use maxims to follow when using social media.

1.   Share with care

Everything doesn’t need to go on social media. Sure, it’s a platform to share your thoughts with everybody, but even then, not everything needs to go there. Personal and identifiable information (like detailed photos of your house and landmarks) can give potential thieves the address to your house. And it’s not just financial threats, remember that whatever you share (text, photo or video) is going to be there for eternity even if you delete it.

2.   Be aware of who can see what

Here’s a basic rule to keep in mind – if you’re active on a social media website, you should be completely aware of who can see what you’re doing there. That means taking out the time to go into your privacy settings and making tweaks as required. Ensure that only the people you want can see the things you share.

3.   Protect your account

All your social media accounts are a treasure trove of information for a cyberattacker. If you don’t want your accounts to fall into the wrong hands, it’s your responsibility to ensure that only you can access your account – and not anyone else. That starts from maintaining strong passwords for all your accounts, keeping multi-factor authentication on, to ensuring that every device you use your social media account from, whether it’s a smartphone, laptop or desktop, is secured.

4.   Don’t believe everything you see

Social media has made it difficult to verify everything you see while holding the ability to emotionally influence you. So, there will be thousands of people you’ll encounter on social media with many sob stories asking for a little bit of financial help to get by. Some of them will seem very convincing and you’ll be moved to donate a small portion of your savings for a good cause. But, not so fast. The more convincing the story is, the warier you should be. Don’t believe everything you see in the big bad world of social media.

5.   Keep your mobile phone protected

If you’re among the thousands who mostly use social media from their phones, you must have a degree of protection on your mobile device as well. Consider Quick Heal Total Security for Android for advanced protection from all manners of threats. Quick Heal also offers a free app called Quick Heal Mobile Security which offers free protection for your phone.

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