Cee Speaks: KISSM – Keeping It Secure in Social Media

Few years ago, when I started publicly opening my journaling through my blog. In it, were mish-mash of my thoughts, travels, hobbies, and reflections. I’ve started a secret travel journal way back in 2010 but I was not able to keep it up so it left open and unattended. I focused on opening my own blog and soon opened a public Instagram account. Prior to publicly opening my accounts, I carefully thought on how to present my profile in such a way that my privacy and security were not compromised. I am no guru in IT security and management but I’ve attended few trainings that made me well aware the repercussions of irresponsible posting, tagging, and uploading of thoughts, videos, photos and other files that can damage someone’s integrity, reputation, and even cost their jobs and relationships.

Social media has become a common fixture in our lives. Some of us cannot live without visiting their social media accounts in a day. Some may even check them as early as they wake up in the morning and browse in the middle of the night before falling asleep. It made a huge impact that it has become the daily routine for most of us. The social media can be an escape to carve and design how we want people to perceive us and validate us through the photos, videos, and thoughts that we want them to see.

Have you seen these scenarios?

• Being a new mom, it is our guilty pleasure to indulge our family, relatives, friends, and colleagues about our journey. This includes posting our birth stories, our child’s first milestones, our motherhood, and tons of pictures of our children. Admit it, most mothers will always find ways to post their child thinking that this is for memories and look back when they grow up. They want to inspire and motivate mothers on their journey.
• You being accomplish at your job. You would post all your inputs, photos, opinions, and even the updates that has been cascaded and communicated in your organization. You share the details of your meetings, your lunch out with team, your accomplishments, and even the location of your work desk. Nothing makes you feel proud about sharing the organization where you worked at and sharing your accomplishments that makes you feel empowered and entitled with the job you do. So, it is just normal to share it to your friends and learn a thing or two about what you are doing.
• You were given an opportunity to travel. It was definitely an exciting trip! You will get to see, visit, and explore different locations and places of interests in your travel. Nothing beats on sharing them to your social media so that your family and friends will see what you are doing and up to. You even flood the chat groups, your personal pages, and even the pages of social media community so that people will not forget where you are currently heading to. It was a trip of a lifetime and an answered prayer. So why not spread your photos so people will get inspired and motivated in your trips? You feel you were truly blessed that all places you can take photos, explore, and share it to everyone you know. People know each and every detail of your route, commute, and trips you’ve taken.
• You love to play and tinker around with social media applications. You love checking out how many percentages of your good and smart side based on your pictures. You like playing around with your images and upload it in different applications. You like joining surveys and games. Sometimes you post funny results of your face apps to get few good laughs with your friends. You like uploading your pic and have it placed beside a known celebrity thinking there might be a chance that you are related or identical twins. You feel with these applications that you were passing time and having fun. Playing and having fun with social media applications doesn’t cause harm.
• You love reading facts and news in social media. You love sharing and forwarding it to your group of friends thinking they would learn something from your profile. You like commenting and sharing your thoughts in different channels and avenues. It makes you feel empowered and intellectual. You love to share facts thinking that you are doing a favor for your family and friends not even checking the sources and links. After all, how can you be liable to one simple comment or one simple post about a questionable information?

Can you relate to these scenarios above? I’m sure most of us have done a lot of activities in social media and we are always posting, updating, browsing, and sharing our social media posts. A lot of times we thought that posting in social media it seems harmless and more like a lot of fun. But what if I tell you that in each and every post we share in our profile, we are also giving away our privacy and security?

Did you know that in every application you use or incorporate in your personal social media sites are being used and monitored by different organizations who mines our data and use it to generate more information more than what we bargain for? We think that those harmless photos and posts will only generate likes and comments from our friends but also generate the interest of people or organization who checks out for our pattern and activities. Scary right?! So how do we ensure to keep our personal photos, information and other pertinent details safe from online predators, hackers, and thieves?

A few months ago, we have National Data Privacy Awareness Act which emphasizes on being keen and mindful on ensuring that the personal information, data, and images we share will not compromised ourselves and families. Here are some of tips to safeguard our information and limit too much exposure of our pertinent and personal information that can be used by abusers:

1. Think Before you Click – This is a good campaign slogan from a local network and up until now a valid way to check on thinking first before clicking the “upload” or “share” button in social media.
2. Limit the number of viewers of our personal photos and sharing of information – we all love the feeling of being a “celebrity”. We act like “celebrity” in a sense that we feel like we owe it to our “viewers” and share to everyone what is our daily routine, tasks likes, wants, and even our quirks. And when we are a new parent, it was our shining moment to share how cute and cuddly our kids. We all think it is a harmless idea but by publicly sharing personal details of our life, we are inviting predators and people who could have easily destroy you by acquiring personal information. Be mindful of sharing your personal photos and information in social media.
3. Check the accuracy of information or link you are sharing in the social media. It is easy for us to click the “share” button when we find interesting or intriguing articles on the Internet. Be wary of shady links and do some little bit of research on the source of the information. We don’t want to spread a false information that can cause harm or tarnish someone’s reputation.
4. Do not start or incite a fight in social media. Stay away from forums, comment sections and posting malicious information or fighting someone because of opposite ideas and beliefs. Always remember to keep you mouth shut if you have nothing nice to say or you are being critical.
5. Ensure the security and privacy of the family. As much as we want to share all the details of our personal lives, make sure to put up security measures that won’t compromise the safety and protection of the family. Do not add people that you don’t know and do not put your information on public that it will be easier for others to access and play around. Do not announce your travel plans and personal goals on social media.
6. Instead of talking in social media about certain things, use the private messaging to catch up or talk to our family and friends privately. A simple slip or snippets of conversation can generate the interest of others and even create a destructive gossip.
7. Do not post IDs, Addresses, latest acquisitions, credit cards and phone numbers on social media. Avoid using geo-tagging in your own home. Do not post your passports and visas for everyone to see. Even your plane tickets and boarding passes. Do not posts your shopping sprees and latest acquisitions.

These are some of the things I can think of, do you have other practices on safekeep and our security in social media? I’d be happy to discuss it. Let’s make the social media a better place.