Overview
The average individual spends 6 hours and 35 minutes of their day on the internet. At least 1/3rd of this time is spent on social media, peering into other people’s lives and giving them peaks into their own. There is however a limit to how much information you can put online without consequence.
In a world where the online presence of an individual is so closely connected to their offline life, and opening up the details of these lives for the world to see is rewarded with validation, attention, or monetary gain, it is important to draw a few lines when it comes to disclosing information.
This security guide is a compilation of methods, practices, and precautions to take when engaging in online activities.
Social Media
Social media is one of the number one ways by which information about your personal life can fall into mal-intended hands. Allow me to draw your attention to some parts of your social media profile.
Direct messages: Do not share anything via social media that you would not want to become public even on private messages. Once you put something out there, you cannot control where it goes. No one can.
Profile descriptions: Do not expose too much information through your profile descriptions. This information is visible to anyone who visits your profile, whether they follow you or not. That little lollipop that says “Mumbai” next to it, just told someone where you live. That graduation hat with the name of your university or workplace, told them where to find you at certain times during the day. You get the idea.
Posts, Stories, and the like: Probably the single most problematic area of all. Stop live-tweeting what you’re doing and where you’re going. Stop putting up stories and posts with LOCATIONS on them WHILE YOU’RE THERE.
Now, some of this may seem like a bit much to some of you, to them I present this. Go back to a time when a friend told you about a new guy or girl they’re seeing. What is the first thing you did? Exactly. Looked them up on social media. What do they do, who do they follow, what did they post, where are they from, you found all of that from 10 minutes of idle scrolling. Now imagine what an actual stalker could do with all that time and resources they are willing to put towards satisfying their obsession.
Here’s a little snippet from a US Army document made publicly available by them for the families of their soldiers:
The underlying concepts hold true for you, me and everybody else.
Geotagging
Geotagging is the process of adding geographical identification to photographs, video, websites and SMS messages. Geotags are automatically embedded in photographs taken by certain smartphones. These geotags can be read by anyone who has access to the photographs.
Many people are unaware of the fact that the photos they take with their smartphones and upload to the internet have been geotagged and they are effectively broadcasting their location to anyone tech-savvy enough to read it.
When Google Photos organises your pictures based on their location, it is these geotags that it uses to determine where you were.
A variety of social media platforms are capitalising on users’ desire to broadcast their geographic location. Snapchat, Instagram, every major social network has their own version of location-based social networking. Snapchat literally shows you a map with the pinpoint location of every human being that can be found in your friend list. All this information is public. All these networks use geotags to determine the location of your activities.
In order to stop broadcasting your location via geotags, go to your camera application’s settings tab and disable geotagging. Every smartphone gives you the option to do this one way or another. Look for what works for your model.
In addition it is also recommended to turn off location services when you’re not using them. It is unnecessary for most activities and broadcasts your location constantly when turned on.
Registrations
Registering for services, newsletters, and online platforms often requires sharing personal contact information, such as your email address and phone number. These opportunities will present themselves to you at festivals, events, conferences, etc. where companies can offer free merchandise, discounts, or other benefits in exchange for your registration.
Here are some precautions to take before registering with your contact information for anything:
- Do your research: Before you give your information to a company’s representative, do some research, ask some questions. What do they need this information for? What kind of reputation does this company have? Do they have data protection and privacy policies in place? Does this company even exist? Is the person claiming to be a representative actually a representative?
- Use dummy email addresses: It is smart to have at least two independent email addresses. Use one for official work and the other to register for discounts, events, etc. Not only will this reduce clutter, it is also much safer. If anything makes you regret providing that email to someone, you can simply disable it without losing the important stuff that you use it for. When operating online, you can go one step further by using temporary email addresses from websites like https://temp-mail.org/en/. These websites provide temporary emails with inboxes that remain active for 10 minutes at the end of which they are destroyed. With these you can register for anything you want and verify your email without providing any actual contact info.
- Limit Information Shared: Only provide the necessary information required for registration. If a company requests excessive details, consider whether the benefits are worth the potential risks.
- Enable Privacy Settings: Check the privacy settings on your accounts and adjust them to limit the visibility of your information. Many platforms allow you to control who can see your contact details and how they can be used.
Conclusion
The recommendations within this guide are ones that I think can benefit the average person if followed. In no means am I claiming that this is an exhaustive list. There is much more research that you need to do for yourself in your own context. This is however a good place to start.
Hope this helps. Stay Safe.
Until Next Time.