Over-sharing on social media
Why should you worry about sharing too much when it’s only your friends who will see?
- Often your posts will be seen by many more people than just those you know. You can restrict this to some extent by carefully checking your privacy settings.
- Even if you have really tightened up your privacy options, what if one of your “friends” is a spoofed account set up to look like the friend you think it is?
- Be careful of quizzes – you don’t know where the answers you enter will end up. We’ve all seen those little trivia quizzes that ask 20 questions about ourselves – have you ever considered that you might just be giving away password clues or social engineering tips?
- Don’t give too much information about your children – which school they attend etc, and never share pictures showing other people’s children without their permission.
- We always advice following advice about Social media from a reliable source so that you can stay safe, whether that is personally or promoting your local business on Social Media.
Why does it matter what I say online anyway?
- things like mentioning that you’re going on holiday show when your house will be left empty and unattended…
- mentioning names of loved ones, pets, schools, siblings, heroes, favourite teams etc can all give clues to passwords or security questions, which could give cyber criminals a way into your accounts.
- sharing everything about your hobbies and interests can play into the hands of social engineering cyber criminals, who have an easy way in to conversations with you / sharing fake links that would be of interest to you, and so on.
- posts showing any irresponsible behaviour may impact on your job / prospective jobs / customer confidence.
- there can be personal safety issues relating to too much sharing online – particularly relating to children, where it has been known for strangers to meet up with children, having found out online where they would be…
So when you are using social media, just keep aware of what you’re posting, and make sure you’re not over-sharing!