Social media’s an integral part of so many lives. I know when I wake up, one of the first things I do is check my messages and notifications on Twitter. It’s relaxing to just scroll while lying down and waking up. But, do you ever stop to think how safe Twitter is? Don’t freak out — it’s nothing serious. At least, it doesn’t have to be. Here are 5 mistakes you’re making with online privacy — and how to remedy them.
- Protect your account as much as possible.
You may think a password is all you need to protect your account, but it’s not that simple. If all you need to do to get access to your account is figure out your password, any potential hackers have an easier job to do than if you were to protect it to the fullest.
By enabling the above options, you’ll get a text whenever there’s a login attempt, and you won’t be able to change your password without knowing additional personal information. This makes it a lot harder for someone else to gain access to your account.
2. Disable your location.
Twitter automatically enables an option to show your location when you tweet when on the mobile app.
It’s a no-brainer why you wouldn’t want to let people know where you are every single time you make a tweet. Twitter will only display a general location (such as the part of the city you’re in), but it’s still too much information to be comfortable.
3. Disable discoverability.
Discoverability is the option to find your twitter account through either your phone number or your e-mail address.
When enabled, anyone who has your number or e-mail saved as a contact can find your twitter. This means friends, family, acquaintances, potential employers… You catch my drift. Unless if it’s a professional twitter account, make sure to disable these options.
4. Make sure you know what applications have access to your account information.
You can sign into twitter on various other sites, such as sites that will mass delete your tweets for you. One example is TweetDelete.
I signed into TweetDelete, used their service to delete my tweets, and then signed out. You may think after that you’re done and they don’t have access to your account anymore. However, they do. As you can see in the above screenshot, TweetDelete still has permission to read and write my tweets. Simply click “revoke access” to take away their ability to do that.
5. Consider locking your account.
Locking your account on twitter is optional, and while many people do it, many others don’t.
Enabling this option makes it so that only the people who you allow to follow you can see your tweets. This is good if you only want your friends to see what you’re talking about, or if you just don’t feel comfortable leaving your twitter account viewable to the world. This one’s really up to you.
These were 5 ways to avoid making mistakes in the world of online privacy. I hope you can keep these tips in mind, and stay safe. Remember — the world wide web is world wide!
