Social media has become an integral part of many people’s lives—we use it to keep in touch with friends, post about our lives and interests, share information and news, and so much more. But many people still don’t understand how social media privacy settings work, which is why we wrote this article.
Whether you’re a regular user of social media or just dipping your toes in for the first time, it’s important to understand how to protect your privacy. To make sure you’re staying as safe as possible when using social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, we’ve compiled a quick rundown of some of the most popular social networks and what they offer in terms of privacy.
Before we provide you with this information, let’s define what social media privacy settings mean.
What are social media privacy settings?
Social media privacy settings allow users to determine who can view their content on various social networking sites and how they can engage with it, such as by commenting, tagging or sending friend request. A few of the most popular web-based social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, have made it easy for users to modify their privacy settings through mechanisms that are accessible from each user’s account page.
Social media privacy settings are an important aspect of keeping your information secured while using any social media platform.
The point of privacy settings is to make sure that it’s only the people you want to see your activities or interact with your page can have access to it for security and personal reasons.
On Facebook, for instance, you can choose from various options ranging from “Only me” (visible only to you) to “Public” (visible to everyone). Other platforms have their approaches—Twitter gives you two settings: “Public” (visible to everyone) and “Protect my Tweets” (available only to people you follow). Instagram allows three settings: “Only me,” “Followers,” and “Everyone.”
How to manage your privacy settings
Here is how to manage your privacy settings on the three major social media platforms:
Users of Twitter can manage who can view their tweets, tag them in pictures, and follow them. By doing this, it is possible to control not just existing followers and who has access to what, but also potential new accounts in the future. It is possible to reject external communication requests as well, eliminating yet another avenue via which hackers could contact you. Your privacy settings can be changed to meet your needs.
You should think about who may see your online content (you have the choice of public, private, friends, and friends of friends) as well as what businesses can access for marketing purposes.
Businesses may access information about you, such as your birthdate, hometown, and interests, to customize their advertisements for you. Facebook lets users choose who has access to their personal information. You can also decide how people can find you on Facebook and on Google search. Doing a privacy check is a great way to start on Facebook.
Users of Instagram can customize their profiles by what details and images they share. Instagram’s privacy settings are much more binary because of its emphasis on photos. Users have the option of setting their profile to public or private, which controls who may follow them and acts as a gatekeeper to their private images. The concern is that people may leave their profiles available for anybody to see as a result of their fascination with the number of likes and comments they receive on an image.
Importance of privacy settings on social media
Privacy settings on social media can protect you from identity theft, cyberbullying, and even physical harm by letting you decide exactly who sees what.
Here are some of the reasons why private settings on social media are important:
- Identity Theft
If someone has access to your information, you could be setting yourself up for identity theft.
Identity theft is a real threat for those who share too much about themselves on the web. It’s best to err on the side of caution and set your privacy settings as high as possible.
But if you take private settings on social media seriously, you won’t be a victim of identity theft.
- Cyberbullying
If you are someone who is constantly being cyber bullied and you don’t have privacy settings on your accounts then people can still find and bully you on various social media platforms. But social media privacy settings prevent cyberbullying from happening because if someone does not have access to your page information and contents, they cannot bully you.
If you have your privacy settings set to private on these sites, only your friends will be able to see what you post and comment on it. This prevents strangers from being able to find personal photos of you or make hurtful comments about you based on what you share with people you know well.
- Physical harm
Social media privacy settings also prevent you from being harmed physically. Your social media accounts can be used to find out information about you (like your home or office address), and often this information can be used to harm you.
Even if you don’t have anything to hide, it still might be a good idea to make sure your privacy settings are set properly to protect yourself from physical harm.
- Keep unwanted eyes away
Using privacy settings helps keep unwanted eyes away from personal information and keeps your content within your circle of friends instead of strangers lurking around the internet wanting to harm or carry out reconnaissance on you.
Conclusion
Every social media platform has different privacy settings. Each one has different options for sharing your information—or not sharing it. If you want to control who can see your posts, pictures, or other content, it’s important to know exactly what kind of platform you’re on.
The key is knowing how the privacy settings of each social media platform work and choosing wisely when you’re deciding what to share and what to keep private.
Don’t forget to check out all of the privacy settings available for each platform—you might be surprised at how many different ways there are to tailor what exactly people can see from you on that site or through Google search.
Take advantage of all the privacy settings available on social media platforms. They’re there for a reason!
Our Research Analyst: Endurance Igbru
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