05 Apr Being Safe on Social Media

In the modern age, social media is a part of everyday life for most people. In fact, over 20% of time spent online is spent on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. People love having the ability to interact with friends at the tips of their fingers. Unfortunately, friends are not the only people who we run into online.

The internet is filled with billions of people, and not all of them are friendly. There are many people out there that take advantage of social media sites. They can use these sites to gather personal information from, and target, victims. Due to this fact, it is extremely important that people be careful what they put online.

You never want to put too much information about yourself online where anyone can see it. Thieves can sometimes use the information they find on social media sites to log into other website accounts, such as a bank, to steal from their targeted victim.

Some things you should never share online are:

• Your social security number
• Your home address
• Your phone number
• Any of your passwords or PIN numbers
• Your bank account information
• Your credit card information

Anything else you wouldn’t want strangers to know, should be kept offline. When posting something online, you should imagine that the post is permanent. It is incredibly hard to actually delete something off of the internet, so you should only share stuff that you wouldn’t mind a stranger seeing.

Social media sites are meant to be fun, but they can also be dangerous. While prominent sites like Facebook are always working to improve the safety of their users, it is important to remember that they cannot protect from everything. So have fun, but make sure to be safe while online.