Nowadays, social media are reigning, whether it’s for advertisement, meeting up with friends, having fun, and/or managing your business online. It already became a bloodline to a lot of people since it’s been integrated into our day-to-day tasks. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and recently, TikTok are the few names that are mostly used when it comes to social media platforms today. It was able to cope up with the needs of people and made advancements for them to utilize. Before, you can only add friends, tweet, post photographs, and send each other personal messages, but with the technology growing faster every day, these companies came up with ideas that will allow them to be future proof for everyone, and thus, ten years later, they are still widely used by mostly everyone throughout the world.
Dangers of Social Media
With the widespread information circulating online, it’s becoming hard to identify which is true or not. Since the fast evolution of social media, it’s not only being used for good, because whether we like it or not, there will be people that’ll take advantage of these things. And as true as it can get, people already starting using this to take advantage of people that have little knowledge of social media. It’s being used for scamming people out of their hard-earned money, phish out information and plot a cyber-attack, to name a few.
Recent studies show that cybercrimes are still reluctant every year; though it’s getting lower, the numbers are still alarmingly high to be set aside. Javelin Strategy and Research made a recent study last 2019 regarding the cybercrimes that took place. A record high of 16.7 million victims of identity fraud was recorded last 2017; fortunate enough, it fell to 14.4 million the following year. Based on the study, the total loss of consumers combined from 2016-2018 was estimated to be $1.7 Billion, and that’s just for Identity fraud alone. Statistically, we can say the cases are indeed lowering, but the number of people getting affected is still off the charts.
Tips to Secure Your Social Media Accounts
As we reiterated, social media accounts are already a key part of everyone’s lives, and it’s important to make sure we have it secured as much as we can. Here are some tips hopefully everyone can use to secure their accounts.
- Always choose a strong password. This would be the obvious one of them all. Since it’s the first line of defense of our accounts, don’t ever use easy-to-guess passwords. Statistically, a lot of people used the word “Password” as their password for their account. To sum it up, don’t use your birthday and username. It’s always advisable to make a complicated password that you’ll be able to remember.
- Try to use a Passphrase instead! Passphrases are way better than complicated passwords. To give you an idea, which will be easier to remember, 3rIgGered or Grapes&Oranges2. Personally, Passphrase is easier to remember and more secured since it’s longer, obviously.
- Change your password/passphrase often. This will prevent people from figuring out your passwords quickly.
- Integrate Two-Factor Authentication. Most of the social media giants already have this option available in their system. Make sure to utilize this to add another layer of security to your accounts. When it comes to 2-FA, the account will require you to enter a code that’ll be sent to either your email or mobile number when you try to log in. It might be troublesome for some, but adding additional security wouldn’t hurt.
- Avoid using the same passwords for your social media accounts. This one speaks for itself, doesn’t it? If one account gets hacked, surely all of it is already vulnerable.
- Don’t give out your password to anyone! An obvious one, isn’t it? Avoid sharing your passwords with anyone, even you trust them, just avoid it as much as possible.
- Use Password Managers. Having different passwords for your social media accounts can be a burden since you must remember multiple passwords for it. Having a Password manager may save you the trouble of remembering all those passwords. You just need to remember one master password, and you’ll have access to your passwords.
Social Media Awareness
With all these precautions and tips being said and done, it’s still up to you to make sure your accounts are safe. People with bad intentions won’t be considering ignorance to whom they will be attacking. So always make sure that your accounts are safe and you are well equipped with the proper knowledge for this kind of scenario.