Security

How to prevent our social media data from being overshared.

INTRODUCTION

Our social media accounts help you share your daily life data with friends. But platforms can go further automatically notify everyone whenever we’re available online, read a message, or even visit a place.

As a general rule of thumb, if we don’t want your loved ones to know what we’re doing every minute of our day, you can try posting less often. our photos, logs, and text updates may convey more information to intend. If we prefer to keep posting, we’ll need to adjust certain key settings in our apps to leave a smaller digital footprint. let us discuss about steps to prevent data from overshared

social media
social media

1.Deactivate your activity status:

Many social apps show your friends a notification when you’re active

And even when you’re offline, they can show your last visit. If you prefer not to broadcast your presence, you can disable this ad on many social networks.

In WhatsApp accounts, access the Settings menu, then go to Account and select Privacy. On this screen, tap on Last Seen followed by Nobody to prevent anyone from knowing when you last accessed the meta messenger.

Instagram also has an indicator of when you were last active.To prevent our accounts data we have To disable this, tap your avatar to open your profile, then tap the menu button in the top right (it looks like three dots on Android and three lines on iOS). From there, go to Settings, Privacy, and Activity Status. Turn off the buttons next to “Show activity status” and “Show in shared activity”. This hides your own activity from everyone, but also prevents you from seeing when someone else was last active.

You can also hide your active status on Facebook Messenger, but it will prevent you account data from seeing who is currently online. Tap your avatar followed by Active Status. Like Instagram, there are two toggle options: Show when active and Show when co-active. turn them off. All your messages will still come through, but no one else will know when you’re actually active on the app

Social Media, Connection, Concept

2.Disable read receipts:

If you’re trying to maintain your privacy, one-to-one messaging options allow you to stay under the radar of social media and stay in touch with people. So the next time you’re ready to post an update, consider pinging a few friends in a group chat on, say, WhatsApp instead of broadcasting your activity to everyone you know. To further protect your privacy, turn off read receipts, which are notifications that let your friends know when you’ve read their messages.

For example, in WhatsApp, go to Settings, then Account, followed by Privacy. There you can disable read receipts. When you’re done, no one knows when you saw your messages, but you also don’t know when your friends saw your messages.

Twitter account also lets you turn off read receipts in your Direct Messages, so contacts won’t know if you’ve already read their notes. Tap your avatar icon in the top left, select Settings & Privacy, go to Privacy & Security, and finally click Direct Messages. Disable the Show Read Receipts button. Again, the usual treatment applies here: once you turn this off, you also won’t be able to see when other people have replied to your direct messages.

You can’t turn off read receipts in the Facebook Messenger and Snapchat apps to prevent data. However, sticking to individual chats on such apps preserves your Lurker status better than posting on public social networks.

3.Stay off the map:

Social media apps can use your current location to provide you with relevant advertisements and alert you to nearby events. But they can also broadcast your location, a feature you might want to turn off  to prevent data.

For example, on Snapchat, tap the silhouette or the Bit moji icon in the top left. Then tap the gear icon in the top right, scroll down to See My Location, and make sure Ghost Mode is turned on. This mode prevents others from seeing where you are.

Facebook also shares your location with your friends. To disable this feature, tap the menu button (three horizontal lines) on the right side of the screen. Go to settings, then tap on location, select nearby friends and turn off the main switch. This will prevent your friends from searching for your current location or receiving notifications when you’re nearby.

These networks may also add your location to your status updates. On the plus side, Facebook and Twitter make it easy to avoid oversharing: they only reveal your location if you specifically click the location button while composing your post. Still, it’s worth double-checking your post before posting to make sure you don’t accidentally reveal it.

social media
social media

4.Restrict target group:

To take advantage of social media without spreading your presence, we considered sending direct messages to a few contacts rather than posting updates for all to see. In addition to this method, Facebook allows you to restrict the audience of your updates post by post.

When composing an update, tap the audience selector button just below your name – it will likely say “Friends” but may be labeled differently depending on your default audience. Once you tap on it, you can restrict who can see this update: just select More, then Specific Friends. This allows you to hide your update from most people on Facebook while adding it to the News Feed of a few select contacts.

on other social media apps gives you the same control. However, with Twitter and Instagram, you can post public messages or limit your audience to your confirmed followers. If you improve your privacy this way, you must explicitly approve all new followers before they can see your posts. However, this will not affect your current subscriber list. On Twitter, you can switch to a protected account by tapping your avatar in the top left, then selecting Settings & privacy, Privacy & security, Audience & tagging, and Tweets

Image source: Pinterest

Infographic: Protecting Your Social Media Data

Protecting Your Social Media Data
Protecting Your Social Media Data

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