Tips and Tricks — Staying Safe In Social Media

Stay safe

‘Please our little boy is missing, he’s 5. He is 2ft tall and dark in complexion. He’s …’.

I would hate to hear someone I love is missing

Most of us must have come across this a couple of times while scrolling through our social media feeds. Most of us have shared and commented with varying degrees of consolation message, from ‘I pray you find him’ to ‘Don’t give up hope’.

What most of us do not know, is that half of the time, the boy got kidnapped with the information we provided, on social media.

NB: I’m going to be social media in place of anything you post/see on the internet.

Kidnapping is just one of many things that happen to us due to the information we read and provide on social media.

In as much as social media has given us a lot of avenue to develop and interact globally with our fellow humans, we should not forget that we live a world filled with killers, psychopaths, kidnappers, rapists and whatnot.

We can’t stay off social media, obviously, but what we can do is to stay safe, to mind the information we provide, to mind how we allow the information we get from social media affect us.

Here are a few tips and tricks on how you can try to stay safe, not fail-proof though, and still enjoy your social media interactions.

• Please and please, do not make really sensitive information public online.

Things like your exact home address, your card details, pins of any sort, exact times you go to and leave work or pick/drop your kids from school and other related details. I understand that it is very tempting to give out some of these information, but we don’t know who’s watching, we don’t know who’s stalking. It’s better not to feed them with enough details as to attack you.

• Avoid using the same password across all platforms.

I have to admit, I am guilty of this because, well, it helps me remember the passwords. On the other side, it helps hackers to easily get hold of all your details and accounts, if they get hold of one. Rather you can choose to use a random password generator (not as safe too but better) for your passwords. Or you could go through the trouble of recovering passwords each time you forget. Better safe than sorry :)

• Always meet people from social media in a public place first

Funny but safe

If you’re going to meet someone that you met through social media, always pick the place and time and also make it a public place where they’d be unable to act out on you. Also, in as much as you’re choosing a place and time, to stay safer, you could always change the location last minute, that way, you get to foil any plans they may have had against you. Do this until you are sure that you can trust the fellow enough. Remember to always tell a friend or two where you are going and who are going to meet. Give them details and contacts just in case of emergency.

• Note that social media almost never tells the full story

It’s a pity that some of the people I know have gone ahead to change their lives because of some information from social media. Some have gone into depression, some have committed suicide, etc not knowing that the people who seemed to have it all on social media, do not in reality, have it all. They do not own that massive mansion they show you everyday, they are not in that abroad they seem to send you pictures of everyday, the smile you see in their faces are relatively fake. You need to understand that most of them are living a fake life on social media. So dear, do not compare your life to the social media norms, rather, live the best of your own life.

• Remember to use social media productively

Social media is fun, yayy, we know! We get to chat and gist away with our time. That is good, no doubt, but don’t forget that you can also learn new and fun facts, you can get gist and involve in productive conversations. You can join in your country’s political issues in social media. Try to follow people who make educational and informative posts. Learn while having fun. You can visit sites like Quora for answers to questions and to ask questions too, read articles on Medium. Trust me, you’d pick up a few helpful tips that would help you in your everyday life.

• Always log out of your accounts when using a public device or a friend’s

I don’t think you need to be told to log out from your account when you use a friend’s phone or a public device to log in. People can be mischievous y’know. The next person to use the device after you, might see you logged in and decided to do some mischievous stuffs with it.

• Always verify information before re-broadcasting or re-sharing

The amount of re-broadcasted spam I get from social media is annoying especially from Whatsapp groups. You’d see a job vacancy post from last two years still going round as per, the position is still vacant. Please, help us all and verify information before you bombard your friends with the broadcast. This will help limit the amount of false data, including job vacancies that make the rounds in out everyday life. Also and very important, please, always put a timeline in your broadcasts, put the date and time at which you create or see the message before broadcasting the message. This will help people know when the post is no longer valid or has expired.

Stay wise and stay safe.

It would be nice if you could read and comment your own tips on how one could adopt safe social media practices.

Intern 004