How To Protect Your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & Snapchat Accounts
|How To Protect Online Privacy On Social Media Platforms
You might want to consider hiding some of your info on social media… it’s worthwhile.
Recent research conducted by Javelin Strategy & Research suggests that social media users (especially Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat), face a 46% higher risk of account takeover and fraud than those not active on social networks.
So how then do we protect ourselves?
Limit Access To Future Posts
You can limit access to your future posts to ensure that they are only visible to friends. This should reduce the amount of data being collected by facebook.
Followers can see your posts on facebook, even if you don’t wish to befriend them. To prevent this, go to Public Posts > Who can follow me and change from Public to Friends.
Stop People Using Your Personal Info For Finding You
To prevent people from using you personal info for finding you, alter your settings in the Privacy > How people find and connect you.
Prevent Your Name Being Linked With Ads
Go to Ads section
Under Ads settings, update your settings
Select “No one” for ads that include your social actions
Save changes
Block Facebook Apps From Accessing Your Data
It’s possible to limit and reduce the info that Facebook apps can access. To block such apps:
Go to Preferences > Apps, websites and games menu
Switch from Turned on to turned off
Prevent Twitter From Tracking You
Control how twitter collects and share your data
In your Account page, click on Privacy and Security
Go to Personalization and data
Click an disable all
Click on save changes
Stop Including Location Data In Tweets
Navigate to Settings and Privacy
Under the Tweet location section, uncheck the box of “Tweet with a location”
Stop Twitter From Accessing Your Contacts
In the Privacy and Safety menu, scroll down to “discoverability”
Uncheck the boxes to stop others from finding you by email address or phone number
Make Your Posts Private
One of the most essential steps to take in protecting info on Instagram is to make your posts private.
From inside the app, click the Settings button and thus toggle “Private account” on.
Prevent Instagram From Sharing Info With Other Social Networking Sites
Access the Settings menu, and then select “Linked accounts”
Unclick all of the accounts you wish to remove
Reduce Profile Info
Instagram only requires you to put a username on your profile. So make your username anonymous, and do not include any other information.
Snapchat
Make Sure Only Your Friends Can Contact You
Snapchat makes it possible for anyone to contact you, but it’s probably best to limit this to your friends.
In Order to achieve this, first access your profile tab via the “gear icon”.
Find the Contact me option under the ‘who can’ heading in your settings, and select ‘My friends’.
Select Who You Want To See Your Stories
Click the gear icon, then scroll down to the ‘who can’ section and tap ‘view my story’. You’ll then have the option of customizing who sees your stories.
Remove Yourself From The ‘Quick Add’ Section
‘Quick Add’ enables you to be added to the friends list of mutual friends.
To disable this setting, locate the ‘gear icon’ > ‘Show me’ in ‘Quick add’ and then turn it off.
Move Private Snaps Saved In Your Memories To My Eyes Only”