Are you worried about using social media?

Why should I be worried about Social Media

Without the proper safeguards in place, your social media accounts could be used against you as a violation of privacy and, perhaps, a way of stealing your personal information. I will discuss this more on the general Web Safety Guru course and in much greater detail on the Social Media Masterclass Zoom course.

How can scammers steal my personal information on social media?

Have you ever received an unusual message from a 'friend' in Facebook messenger or a friend request from somebody you thought you were already connected with? Chances are this is actually a scammer pretending to be your friend. Once you add this 'friend' they will often have access to a much greater set of your data than random people on the internet. I will discuss what you should do about this on the courses. Perhaps though you've just not been very careful with your privacy settings or, worse still, you have responded to the kind of posts you should never respond to on Facebook. Certain Facebook posts are designed to steal answers to the security questions you may have set up with banks. I will teach you how to spot these kinds of posts on the course.

Who can see your personal information on Social Media?

The personal information available on Social Media varies from site to site and you generally have quite a degree of control over what others can see by default. One tip I would give is never allow your full date of birth to be visible to strangers. You may also have to be careful using apps like WhatsApp as the details of your contacts are shared with Facebook, even when either you or your contact is not actually a Facebook user.

How do I protect my personal information on Social Media?

I will show you how you can restrict your information - I will go through how and why you should do this in great detail on the Social Media Masterclass. The actual settings will vary from site to site. Facebook has different areas where you can restrict other people's access to your posts, your photos and your personal details. One tip, use groups to control which of your Facebook friends have access to which posts.

What can go wrong if my personal information is stolen on Social Media?

If a scammer hacks one of your friends, then you could be next. Someone could be pretending to be you on Facebook for example. Be especially careful about your important information. Make sure it is not visible to any Tom, Dick or Harry. If somebody has access to your full name, date of birth and location this could form the basis of quite serious identity theft, especially if they have also managed to work out one or more of your security questions. We'll discuss this in detail on the courses. Be careful when answering generic and seemingly innocent questions on Facebook, for example about a much loved pet.

If think my friend might have been hacked on Facebook, how do I check?

We'll discuss this in more detail on the course but, in a nutshell, you want to do your communicating offline. If you absolutely have to communicate with the suspicious message or account, ask them something very specific that the two of you would know but a hacker wouldn't be able to work out. For example, ask where did you first meet. Your friend should appreciate your concern in asking the seemingly odd question.