In the current social media landscape, it’s easy to overshare. More people than ever can find intimate details about your life by analyzing the information you choose to broadcast online.
Even more worrying are the security concerns that come from posting your life's details online. Your public posts can make you easy targets for advertisers, scammers, spammers, stalkers, and every other undesirable person online. Read on to find out why you should make your public social profiles private and how you can lock them down today.
How to Lock Down Your Online Presence
Before I get to why it's so important to make your accounts private, let's start with a few steps you can take today to reduce your social media footprint. Social platforms all have different locations for their menu settings, so I'm offering general guidelines for privacy protection:
DIFFICULTY
Beginner
DURATION
10 minutes
TOOLS
Access to your social media accounts
Step 1:Change Your Privacy Settings
Visit the Settings menu within your social media account and review your privacy settings. From there, switch your public profile to a private one. You can also choose who sees specific posts, live streams, photos, and videos. Some social media platforms, such as TikTok, allow you to limit who can see your engagement with other posts on the platform. In another example, Facebook offersPrivacy Checkup and Off-Facebook Activity toolsthat can help you manage who can see and interact with your posts. You can also prevent Facebook’s apps and games from sharing your data.
(Credit: Meta/PCMag)
Step 2:Use a Password Manager
If you use the same password across multiple social sites, the damage could be severe. If you choose to keep your social media accounts active, create a unique, hard-to-guess password for each one and keep track of all of your passwords and passkeys using apassword manager.
(Credit: 1Password/PCMag)
Step 3:Enable Multi-Factor Authentication
In the event that a successful scammer attempts to access your social media accounts, multi-factor authentication using an authenticator app or a hardware security key is your last line of defense. Enable this protection by visiting your social media account and clicking on the section labeled Security within the Settings menu. You'll need to enter a code or use an authenticated device each time you log into that account, but it's worth it to keep your data out of the hands of strangers.
(Credit: Meta/PCMag)
Step 4:Delete Your Public Social Profiles
One way to mitigate the risks that come from interacting with other humans in a public space is to simply delete your accounts. That way, you can prevent oversharing, as well as a worse fate: an account takeover by a hacker. To begin the account deletion process, you may want to download a copy of your content from the social platform. Afterward, simply delete your account. Most social platforms allow you to reinstate a deleted account within a certain time period.
(Credit: Meta/PCMag)
As a teenager, I loved social media. Armed with a Myspace page, a Friendster account, and an AIM friends list a mile long, I constantly posted vague, navel-gazing song lyrics from the likes of Modest Mouse and Interpol. Did I overshare? Absolutely. In those heady days of assumed internet anonymity, I never considered who read my (very dull) suburban teenage thoughts until a teacher referenced one of my posts during class.
I was mortified. Aside from being concerned as to why my teacher looked up his students on Myspace in his spare time, I saw the event as an invasion of my privacy. I realized that people I didn’t know or trust presumed to know "the real Kim" from reading my silly joke posts and sad song lyrics. Social media ultimately lost its appeal for me, and I locked down or deleted all my accounts. It was a tough lesson, but I'm glad I learned it early in my life online via a relatively low-stakes incident.
(Credit: grinvalds/Getty Images)
To an online scammer, a public social media feed is akin to a well-stocked supermarket of personal data. Criminals can pick through intimate details of your life and then load up their carts with sensitive information about you, no matter how trivial. Scammers then use that information to impersonate you for financial gain, send you messages containing phishing links, or target you with romance scams.
4 Questions to Ask Before Posting on Social Media
Perhaps a public social media profile is necessary for your career, as it is for mine. Maybe you want to find some new friends or get information about a new hobby. You can still create public posts about those things without sacrificing a lot of personal data. Just avoid sharing information and media related to your daily routine, family, medical details, and other private details.
It's Surprisingly Easy to Be More Secure Online
But what if you're having a hard time and you just want to vent? Before you post a love life lament or voice your workplace grievances using a public social media account, I recommend asking yourself the following questions:
1. Who Needs to Know This?
Identify your desired target audience before you hit "send." If you are posting just for yourself, it's wise to conduct an internal check and determine why you need to post this private thought, photo, or other media in a public forum.
2. Do I Want Strangers to See This?
You may think you're screaming into a void, but social platforms are not a black hole for thoughts and ideas. A lack of engagement in the form of likes or shares on your posts doesn't mean other people aren't seeing them. Not only are your fellow humans seeing what you post online, but they also may be forming an image of you that you don't intend to project. There's also the worry that criminals may scan your posts for information about your life so they can conduct social engineering schemes to bilk you out of your hard-earned money.
3. Do I Want This to Follow Me Forever?
Remember that the internet never forgets. If you write words, broadcast media, or post photos online, assume that all of that content is going to stick around for a long time.
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4. What Do I Want to Happen After I Post This?
Consider what you have to gain from posting personal information or photos of yourself in a public setting, and also consider what you have to lose, which is anonymity, privacy, and security.
Keep It to the Group Chat (or Yourself!)
If you're prone to oversharing on social media platforms, don't despair! The good news is that chatting and sharing media with groups of family and friends on secure messaging platforms is a much safer way to communicate. Signal, in particular, added new options for stories and feed activities that allow you to interact easily with all of your friends on the app. As a bonus, you'll be sharing your posts with people who are most likely to engage with what you post.
Another option is to start writing your thoughts down in a private diary or journal. I prefer to use a cheap but sturdy notebook and a pen for journaling, but there are plenty of digital journaling apps out there too. I also like to use the Notes app on iOS for dashing off quick thoughts and storing assorted memes.
Don't give up your privacy and safety for a few likes and the off-chance of temporary fame. Keep your personal information private. To learn how to further reduce your online presence, check out PCMag's guide to staying anonymous online.
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I review privacy tools like hardware security keys, password managers, private messaging apps and ad-blocking software. I also report on online scams and offer advice to families and individuals about staying safe on the internet. Before joining PCMag, I wrote about tech and video games for CNN, Fanbyte, Mashable, The New York Times, and TechRadar. I also worked at CNN International, where I did field producing and reporting on sports that are popular with worldwide audiences.
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