7 tips for using social media sites safely

If you are feeling concerned about your social media privacy settings, read on for some useful tips to help you enjoy social media more safely.

While social networking sites are great for keeping in touch with family and making new friends, they’re also a boon for anyone looking to harvest personal information, for whatever purpose. 

Sharing too much information on a social network may leave you at risk of identity theft – and even home burglary. 

Follow our top social networking tips to help safeguard your privacy.

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1. Make use of privacy settings

Read the site’s privacy policy and use its privacy and security settings to control who can see your personal information.

Facebook, for example, offers controls over who can see your basic or full profile, your posts and photos and what appears in your timeline. Instagram and Twitter allow your posts to only be seen by people you grant access to.

Going through the privacy settings and making your profile more secure will help keep your information safer, but we can never be completely confident that our data is safe. If people allow personality quiz apps to access all their Facebook data, then that includes their friend lists. So even if you don't allow any third party apps to have access to your profile, your friends could be inadvertently allowing that. 

And even if you're pretty sure you've never fallen for a trap like this, did you know that if you have allowed a third party app access to your Facebook profile at any point since joining the site, it could still be working away in the background, collecting data? With some profiles now notching up a decade of existence, who knows what you might have clicked on ten years ago?

Luckily, you can find out quite easily...

Go back to the 'Settings & Privacy' option in the top right corner of Facebook and then click 'Settings'. You should see an 'Apps and websites' category. Clicking on this will bring up a list of apps and websites using your Facebook account, as well as whether they are active or have expired.

Are you surprised at how many apps have access to your profile? Just click the Remove button to get rid of them and you're suddenly a lot more secure. 

But as stated before, you never can be too careful, which leads us nicely into our next point. 

Five scams to steal your identity

2. Don’t overshare

You probably know much better than to broadcast your mother's maiden name or the name of your first pet, and you might sensibly choose not to disclose your birthday (how much are the half-hearted birthday wishes from someone you briefly worked with seven years ago worth anyway?) but do you avoid giving details of upcoming holidays? 

Criminals scour social networks to find empty houses to burgle.

So for that reason, whilst you're away, try to resist sharing holiday snaps until you get home safely. Some insurers may refuse a claim if you’ve broadcast your vacant home on Facebook or other social accounts.

In general, don’t post personal details, such as your phone number or home address. Avoid posting photos of your home that make it easy to identify where you live.

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3. Spot the fake accounts

Don’t accept every friend or follower request you get – only connect with people you know in real life or whose identity you know is genuine. 

Criminals create fake online accounts in order to befriend others and harvest personal information.

So if you receive a friend request from someone you thought you were already friends with, don't blindly accept them - don your virtual deerstalker and do a bit of detective work. First, see if you can find the profile you thought you already linked to. If your friend is still on your list without you having accepted the new request, then the new request is more than likely an interloper.

Unfortunately it's common for scammers to create fake identities by using the name, profile picture and personal details of someone and going through their friend list to find targets. If you see this happening report the account to Facebook to be deleted, and tell your friend about the infraction too so they can advise the other people on their friend list to keep everyone safe. 

There has been an increasing number of fake business accounts too. People might set up a page using a company name and logo. It's common for these scam pages to try and get personal details out of people, such as encouraging people to fill out data capture forms, often under the guise of pretending there is a prize draw or fee gift. Most business accounts are verified and will have a blue tick, although it's worth knowing business with a lot of brands under their name are often have a limited amount of verified account they can have, for example the main Saga page is verified but the Saga Holidays account is not. In these cases use your judgement and be on the lookout for red flags such as poor spelling and grammar, unusual or irrelevant posts, a small amount of followers or 

You can follow the official Saga Facebook page here and the official Saga Twitter account here.

If, reading this, you realise you've accepted a friend request from someone you'd rather not have access to your profile, find out how to unfriend on Facebook.

4. Be wary of clicking links

Avoid clicking on links in messages, tweets, posts, and online advertising when they come from accounts you don't know or trust. These may be links to viruses or other forms of malicious content.

If a person or business you follow suddenly posts something spammy be aware they might have been hacked.

Common methods hackers use to get people to click on links is to tag people in the hacked account's friend list or send private messages. These could be anything from 'look at these Ray Ban sunglasses' to 'look at this video of you I found'. Trust your gut and be cautious, if something seems off it likely is. If you have any doubt contact your friend through another method such as text message or email, or ask someone else in their household if they have been hacked.

5. Don’t link accounts

Many websites and apps give you the option to ‘Log in with Facebook’, rather than creating a separate account. But by doing this, your social network may share all the information it holds about you, including the date and place of your birth, your email address and employment details, along with photos. 

Furthermore, with just one log-in for multiple sites, if one site is hacked, then all your accounts are compromised too.

You can disconnect these accounts from your profile by going into Setttings & Privacy> Security > Apps & Websites. There you will see a list of websites using your Facebook account and the option to remove them.

6. Use a separate email

On that note, you could even go one step further and create a separate email account to use with each social network. That way, your main email account is protected from any spam or phishing email you may receive.

Having multiple emails might seem like hassle but if they're through the same email provider it's usually a simple case of selecting your profile and bringing up a drop-down list of your different accounts to swap between them.

Signs an email may be a scam

7. Use strong passwords

You've heard it again and again - use a separate password for each social account. 

Make it at least eight digits long and a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols. 

You probably don't use separate passwords because passwords are, by their very nature, hard to remember.

So to get round it, and avoid having a massive tome filled with passwords, you could devise yourself a code only you know.

For example, you could assign each vowel an animal, then take the first vowel of the website's name to start creating a truly unique password. Perhaps combine it with the number of letters in the website's name, giving you something no one could guess.

With this code, your Facebook password becomes AntEight8. Twitter becomes IguanaSeven7. 

And for an extra layer of safety, choose a username that doesn’t help identify you, such as maryjsmith_1961.

Seven password mistakes to avoid

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