Social networking websites are so hot nowadays that every living adult has at least one account in any social media. It's so easy to use these tools to connect to other people who are in the opposite side of the world. Powered with mobile content delivery, social media can be accessed anytime and anywhere. Although this is one great advantage, however other information you post might be harmful for the image you want to showcase online. In this article, we will tackle information that social media know about you.
1. Telephone Numbers
When you have a new phone and number, you tend to share them with your friends to maintain contact. While this is good practice, mind your privacy as well. Instead of putting your number as a status message shown to the public, sending private messages to chosen friends and never to complete strangers is a must. If you don't want to get spam messages or worse be harassed and contacted through your phone every other minute for marketing purposes, don't let your numbers out in any public forum or blog site. Also note that sometimes even if you don't expressly give out data to the open, a few social sites share certain information with marketers and/or third-party partners
2. Location/Address
There are the likes for FourSquare, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram which have location services that are built-in into the application. Wherever you are, your mobile device can serve as a GPS locator that tells your friends or the world (depending on your privacy settings) about your location. This can pose danger to you as everyone in your contact or anybody who searches the location can find you instantly. The best thing to do for safety is to ignore friend requests of people you do not know in real life.
3. Face
Of course, your pictures are everywhere posted in your photo albums on social media. One quick Google search of your name can aid searchers to know how you look like. Social media now is also able to define your face and this increases your risk of being a victim of identity theft doubles. Since it's easy to attach a photo to a name, other people can use your picture and tag themselves pretending that they are you. Last year, according to Javelin Strategy and Research publication, there were about 11.6 million reported cases of fraud which were victimized by online identity theft.
4. Likes and Interests
Be careful whenever you push that G+ button, Facebook share, like or recommend, etc. These social media shares imply your likes and interests. Businesses can take advantage of this information and pull them out for analytics. They can utilize these to build their target market, but in some instance, they can also be used against you. When they know about your likes and interest through social media, they can offer you with enticing deals that result to fraudulent incidents. So never believe them and stick to safety and legality.
5. Friends and Network
Since social networking sites are largely about connection and interaction, friends show up and people who are in close network can view your friend list. In the case of Twitter and Facebook, you may choose to hide them. In others, you don't have the liberty to choose but just present the names of your friends out to the web. There's a saying that goes "birds of the same feather flock together." When people know that you are friends with one person, they might assume that you are likely the same with that guy. Social media may potentially bring false claims and impressions by the way people discover content.
Conclusion
Transparency in social media is quite big. You never know when you might encounter problems because of it. How to manage your social networking accounts give feeds to the web and manage your presence, stay aware of online privacy statements and settings, terms and conditions and disclaimer clauses regarding personal data sharing of the site before working your way to using it. Social media membership is for free but there's a cost to pay if you do not pay close attention to the information that can be stolen from you. Is social media in this aspect boon or bane? You decide.