How to protect yourself from social media’s threats.

Social networks are now part of our daily lives more than ever. Do you know a person who doesn't have an Instagram account? Twitter? Facebook ? Snapchat? Personally, I do not know a single person who does not have an account on these social networks. And precisely, these social networks present many threats, and you have to learn and to know how to protect yourself from these threats. 

But what can these threats be seen and how do we know that it is dangerous? Let’s give some famous examples:

• Fake giveaways: A famous example of a fake giveaway is from a couple of years back when a number of pages using famous car brand names ran competitions with prizes of new cars. Many of the pages were created for ‘like farming’ to gather likes and then be sold on to a third party.

• Fake friends or followers: Sometimes people buy followers or make themselves some friends through social media. You can come across psychopaths who want to hurt you and it can end badly.

• Abuse and cyberbullying: Cyberbullying has become a feature of social media usage in the past few years with many organisations and networks actively combatting this form of abuse.

• Identity theft: Criminals and hackers can steal your identity and it can go very far. You might be accused of crimes you didn’t commit. They can steal your bank data. And many other things. 

These are examples of the threats that can happen when you use social media. 

Now, you better learn how to protect yourself from these threats: 

• As your parents said when you were young: never accept some candies from an unknown person. That is to say that you better not talk to someone that you don’t know on social media. 

• Never allow automatic logins and create a unique password! Not too simple! Never give it to anyone and change it frequently. Even your friends may one day betray you… 

• Close old accounts that you don’t use anymore. 

• Be very selective when you accept followers that you don’t know on your account. 

• Think about the thing you are about to post. Watch out to not publish something racist, mean to someone ect… 

• Manage your privacy settings. You better put your account in private than in public. Don’t reveal personal information.

These key factors can help you to protect yourself from social media’s threats. You have to take these really seriously and to always be aware of these threats. 

Constance Markarian.