Social Media Safety-10 Tips for Women

It’s better to avoid something from happening in the first place than to fix the damage once it occurs. In this epoch of social media, the concern for women safety is increasing. The question remains, how safe are women online on social media? The simple answer to this is, women are safe on social media “if” they take careful steps. Social media is a mixture of different types of people. Some make use of social media for entertainment while some use it to take the advantage of people, regardless of their gender.

At the same time, it’s observed that women are experiencing difficulties because of social networking through the misuse of their profile and images which actually mess up their lives.

Here are some social media safety tips for women that can save themselves from falling into the disaster:

#1 Use Complex Passwords

You should never share the password of your social media account with anyone. The most common way to misuse your account is by posting/sharing inappropriate things from your social profiles. This can damage your reputation online. Additionally, it’s important that you use a complex password for your account so that to avoid any possibility of passwords getting hacked. Using special characters like (!@#$ %&{}<>?/|) in your password will make your password stronger and difficult to guess.

#2 Never Connect With People You Don’t Know

Females get a lot of the follow request on Instagram, Twitter or numerous friend requests on Facebook. In reality, not all of them know her personally. For example, let’s say if you meet someone you don’t know will you start talking to him or her at first? If we don’t know someone personally, we shouldn’t have any interaction neither in reality nor in the virtual world. Most of the time strangers play a massive role in causing a crisis of identity on a social media platform. Thus, women must avoid adding people they don’t know personally.

#3 Re-Think Before You Share

Everybody likes to click and share pictures of themselves eating, traveling, doing check-ins, watching movies, working out or any daily activities. Be careful while sharing such information, as this will be easy for the attacker to know your whereabouts.

There are plenty of cases which resulted in mishappenings because of sharing detailed information about the current activity. Hence, one must decide wisely on which post to choose.

#4 Don’t Disclose Your Location

When you access social media from any device, ensure that you turn off the location. The apps sometimes access your device location and when you share an update it fetches the data and might show up on the app. Thus, to maintain privacy, it’s suggested that you turn off the location option.

#5 Photo Morphing

You cannot control photo morphing for any of your pics. As far as it’s the matter of social media, there will always be the risk of your photo’s being photoshopped. Despite that you can save yourself from falling into that misfortune by following some of these basic things:

• Define strict privacy for your profile
• Don’t add strangers to your profile
• Set privacy for your pictures

#6 Avoid Using Hashtags

Hashtags are mainly used for getting visibility. If you too use hashtags on your post you will be visible on the internet. A lot of people are habitual of using hashtags for every post they share on social media. If you avoid using hashtags, it will make you less prone to the attacks that could destroy your reputation.

#7 Use Incognito Mode

If you are using another computer or a device to login, you should always sign in using incognito mode of the browser. This way, the privacy will be maintained and the chances of compromising your password will be less. The password never gets saved in incognito mode. Thus, all your information like username and password remains safe.

#8 Protect Your Profile Picture

A large number of women prefer not to upload their profile picture on social media because they are afraid that their photo might get misused. To prevent this, Facebook has added a new feature on its platform to ensure the safety of the profile pictures so that nobody can share it. This is a huge step towards protecting self-image of women.

#9 Logging Out

After you have used social media, you should always log out of the account in order to ensure your account remains safe. In case, you are accessing your account from someone else’s computer and don’t logout, there are chances that your account will be accessed and personal data will be leaked. This will allow that person to defame you, if that is the intention of him/her.

#10 Don’t Neglect Privacy Policy

The privacy policy is a thing that nobody cares about or people usually overlook it thinking “too long to read”. If you are one of them, then probably you are missing out really important information or terms about policy. Cutting off short, it is very much important to learn what is mentioned in the privacy policy in detail, as this will help you know up to what extent your profile is safe.

Here are the security and privacy settings/ policy of social media sites:

• Facebook – security and privacy of Facebook Profile

• Twitter- security and privacy of Twitter

• Instagram – security and privacy of Instagram Profile

• LinkedIn – security and privacy of LinkedIn Profile

• Snapchat – security and privacy of Snapchat Profile

• YouTube – security and privacy of Youtube

What to do in case your account gets hacked?

Changing your password should be your first step. If again your account gets hacked, delete the previous account and start a new one.

In case, your account becomes inaccessible, you need to report the issue to that specific website.

What to do in case someone sets up a fake account on your name?

Without any delay, report the fake account to the respective website. This process may take a while for removing the fake account.

Additionally, keep the evidence of such accounts as it can be abusive or threatening.

If the matter goes beyond your hands, do get in touch with local police and report the abuse to them as this may cause risks about your safety.

Closure

Remaining safe should be your highest priority. Therefore, as a woman, you must ensure that you follow all the safety tips mentioned above while using social media. This will be helpful in protecting your self-image and social-representation.

Even after following the above practices, in case you fall prey of bullying on social media then it’s important you take the actions such as reporting to the website, or contacting local police or getting help from the cyberlaw team.