How much data do your social media profiles reveal?
Social media is a big part of modern day personal and business life. Whether it’s staying in touch with friends or launching a new advertising campaign, social media is so important. It’s a valuable tool which extends both contacts and marketing opportunities. However, our IT services often extend to assisting clients who ran into issues via social media, so there are still some big risks you have to be aware of.
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Risks
- Accounts can become hacked or compromised if passwords are weak or stolen
- Emails can easily be found and spammed with phishing emails
- Cyberbullying and cyberstalking can become a problem
- Revealing too much personal information can put you in danger. Such as posting that you are away on holiday could entice intruders into your empty home whilst you are away
- Children can be exposed to inappropriate content for their age, as well as groomed and abused online
- Anyone can be exposed to offensive and abusive content including sexual, hateful, racist and extremist content
- Vulnerable people online can become victim of extremist behaviour attempting to change opinions, views. beliefs and ideologies
- Posting or commenting offensive content could reflect badly, affecting your job, your future and and previous prosecutions resulting in recrimination
- Your friends, pages you follow and groups could encourage you to click on fraudulent links
- Viruses and spyware could infect your devices if a dodgy link is opened from a message or post
Your data on Facebook
With the Facebook being the world’s most popular social network with over 2 billion users and the introduction of GDPR last year, it’s really important to know what data Facebook has about you and who else can view this data. You can request a file from Facebook on your data to see exactly what is being shared with the world and with advertisers. To request your information from Facebook, follow this guide.
Information Facebook can hold about you
- Posts – Any posts you have written or shared. This also includes any posts you have hidden or any polls you have created
- Photos – Any photos you have shared or been tagged in
- Videos – Any videos you have shared or been tagged in
- Comments – This is any comment you have ever posted on in a group, on someone’s timeline, on your own posts or on a page
- Likes and Reactions – Any posts, comments or pages you have liked and reacted to
- Friends – People you are connected with
- Following and followers – People, organisations and businesses that you follow as well as the people that follow you
- Messages – Messages you have exchanged with your Facebook friends
- Groups – Groups you are in, manage and any posts or comments you have made in these groups
- Events – Your responses to events and events you have created
- Profile Information – Your contact information, ‘about you’ section, profile and life events
- Pages – Pages that you are admin of
- Marketplace – Your activity both selling and buying on Marketplace
- Payment History – All payments you have ever made through Facebook
- Apps – Apps that you have installed and are admin of
- Other Activity – Any other kind of activity on your account such as pokes you have given and received
- Search History – Every search you have completed on Facebook
- Location History – Locations you have visited through location services enabled on your device
- Calls and Messages – Logs any calls and messages you make and have chosen to share with Facebook in your device settings
- About You – This is all the information associated with your account
- Security and Login – Full login history, logouts, time you have been active and the devices you have used
- Networks – Information about the networks you use to connect to Facebook
Read the security information on some of the most used social media accounts
Take Action
Things to watch out for
- Unusual links in messages that seem out of character for the friend that has sent you the message
- Make sure you know what people are posting about you, whether it’s images, text or videos. Make sure it doesn’t reflect badly on you
Protect yourself and your business
- Ignore people trying to pressurise you to buy anything, join any groups or take part in anything you don’t want to or criminal activity
- Make sure your profile is private and only those you trust can see your content
- Use a separate email address for social media purposes so your personal email address has less risk of becoming attacked by cybercriminals
- Make sure you use strong passwords for your social media accounts and they are all different
- Report anything you are unhappy with and if someone posts something or tags you in something that could affect something like your job, message them politely asking them to remove the content and explain your concerns
- Current and future employers can see the content you post, so remember, what goes online stays online
- Learn to use the platforms fully so you can take advantage of the security features
- Learn to spot and avoid phishing scams
- Ensure you have the latest antivirus, a firewall and everything is up to date
Report it!
- If your account is hacked, warn your friends and family not to click on any links that may have come from your account and change any passwords
- Disconnect any other apps you have connected with the social media account that has become compromised
- Phone us straight away on 0800 680 00 88 and report it to Action Fraud
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