Are you being safe on Social networks?
While we are all on the different social networks, busy adding friends, talking to people and getting on with our business a question needs to be asked
Are you protecting yourself?
The reason for this post is that over on G+, I have been reading from others about the nastiness of stalking, harassment as well as cybercriminals and the damage it has caused them
I thought it would be a good time to talk about a few pointers and reminders to everyone on Adlandpro about staying safe
There are many things we need to be aware of when online
- keeping your computer clean... make sure you have the latest security software installed as an example
- Make sure that any passwords you create are secure
- If an email or link even looks suspicious, then delete it or mark it as spam
- the holy grail of being thoughtful ..post only about others as you would have them post about you
That being said what else should you be doing?
1. while everyone will say...connect with people you trust, the reality is that people, especially people who are in business, want and need a good group of people to connect with ( and that's being very honest). What you need to do is what I call "vet" a person (check them out) before connecting or accepting a contact.
How to do this?
- Read their profile, if a person does not have a profile then that should raise a red flag to everyone.
- Everyone creates profiles to bring out the best of them, but if what is being said is implausible, then learn to trust your gut instincts. If the person is approaching you, there is nothing wrong in asking for proof of some kind.
- Images or profile images are something that has created a debate for many people. Personally and will admit depending on the social network, I will rarely accept a contact with a person who will not show their face. On the other hand there are people who will put up an image and you have to wonder if they are real people. If you are curious about a profile image you can do a check using Google images..simply click and drag the profile image to the Google image search and see what comes up. Google uses facial recognition and other algorithms to match a picture, and will either return an exact match (with information like names), or pictures similar to the original.
- Check out friends that people have and are they global or local. Especially on Facebook the more local the friends, the more likely the person is to be real. The more global their friendship list, with very few or no local friends, start getting suspicious.
The lack of local friends suggests that this is not a real person you're dealing with but a fake account. This is often used by people pretending to be attractive young women. They will often contact you with a line like "I saw your picture and you looked nice."
- Beware interconnected faking. At one time it was probably reasonable to think that if someone had a group of friends interacting with them and vouching for each other, that that person must be real. Not anymore!
There are increasing cases of one person running numerous fake Facebook/twitter accounts, pretending to be an array of different people, all vouching for one another and all trying to be friends with someone real!
2 Never ever give out personal information! We live in a time where we our lives are spent on the social networks and we never think of such things as phone numbers, addresses etc. UNLESS you know a person do not give out any information. I have a great friend who will not trust a person or let them into her circle unless she has a way to meet or talk to them. That is not always possible, so she devised a way to check them out..she uses skype or Google Hangouts to make sure that the people she meets are real and as she has been doing this for a few years now, it obviously works for her. While there are many good people in this world, there are also people who will not be so kind and will use your "trust" to come into your life and cases of stalking and harassment is not as uncommon as you might think. Please think before trusting anyone with such personal information.
I did a post on my blog quite a while ago about cyberstalking that is as valid today as when I wrote it...keeping yourself safe also means other factors to be aware of and I hope that when you read Cyber-Stalking happens to MEN and Women! that it will give you food for thought and more importantly will be of use to you.