Social Media

Social media profiles get stolen. To protect your account: use a unique and strong password, and enable 2-factor authentication. Never add your phone number in social media profiles: automatic scanners search by known phone numbers to find linked profiles. You can reset a Twitter account password with SMS even if 2FA is enabled, as long as a phone number exists on the account.

Social media networks allow you to control your privacy settings. By default it would be too open, offering you to share your profile and actions with the entire world. Ensure that you are limiting what data you are currently exposing and to whom, also this should be discussed in your family circle: often non-public people are easily found through their relatives.

No, the 'private' group is not really private. Every comment, like, and message are displayed to people and robots, and you cannot have control over it. Therefore, before uploading, posting, or commenting on anything, think, "Would I mind if this was totally public?".

Pretty much every post, comment, photo, etc., is continuously backed up by third-party services, who archive scraped data and make it indexable and available for public or purchase. When you delete something, it's hidden from you, but not from moderators and admins – the data will remain there, and you cannot have control over it.

Profile information creates a goldmine of info for hackers, the kind of data that helps them personalize phishing scams. Avoid sharing too much detail (DoB, Hometown, School etc). Posting your real email address or mobile number, gives hackers, trolls and spammers more munition to use against you, and can also allow to link your profiles in different systems.

Media you upload can unintentionally reveal a lot more than you intended. This is especially relevant to photos and videos, which show things in the background. Most smartphones and cameras automatically attach a comprehensive set of additional data (called EXIF metadata) to each photograph. Even if application was denied access to your location, it will guess your city from your IP address.

Many of the popular social networking apps will ask for permission to access your contacts, location, media library, etc. They don’t need this access, don’t grant it.

If you sign up for accounts using a social network (Sign in with Twitter, Login with Facebook, etc.), you risk losing access to them if your profile is blocked due to a report or policy violation. Third-party integrations can download and cache your profile data and connections, making it difficult or impossible to remove later. Regularly check and revoke access to social apps you don't actively use, as they could be sold to a scam company along with all user data.

If you still plan to share any content that reveals a location, then wait until you have left that place. Don't publish your plans in advance. This is particularly important when you are taking a trip, at a restaurant, campus, hotel/resort, public building or airport. Every international tourist is deemed a wealthy target by local criminals.