Protect Yourself On Social Networks | Antivirus Software

Friends and family aren't the only ones stalking you on social media - potential employers or shady characters can, too. So it's important that you lock out your accounts to make sure that only the information you want to be made public is.

Protect yourself on Facebook

To start locking your account, go to the top right corner, click the down arrow and choose “Settings,” where most of your account privacy and security options are.

Security and connection

Under this tab, you can choose to enable 2FA protection, view the devices in which your account is actively logged in, and choose whether or not to receive alerts about unrecognized login attempts. If you wish, you can also nominate three to five friends who can help you if your account is blocked.

Your information on Facebook

• Activity Check: Under Activity Log, you can review all of your social network activity, including posted messages, messages posted at other times, preferences, and event handling. You can use the "edit" button to authorize an item on a timeline, hide it, or remove it completely. It's a handy feature to clean up your old timeline.
• Download Data: Under this tab, you can choose to download all the data that Facebook has on you.
• Privacy settings and tools: Here you can choose who can see your future messages. For privacy reasons, it is best to do this only for friends, unless you are happy that this content is automatically made public.
• How people can find and contact you: You can strengthen your account by also limiting who can send you friend requests, who can view your friend lists, and whether people can use the email address or phone number. the phone number you provided to find your profile. You can deactivate the possibility for search engines outside the network to connect to your Facebook profile.
• Location: Disable this option to prevent Facebook from collecting history of your location.
• Face Recognition: Another feature you should consider turning off - it's unnecessary.
• Apps and websites: Under this tab, you can see the list of third-party services that have been logged in using your Facebook credentials and if they are active.
• Ad Preferences, advertisers: A setting option that has been heavily developed since the Cambridge Analytica scandal,  this section you can review what Facebook considers to be your interests, a list of advertisers who "serve ads using a list of contacts that they or their partner have downloaded that includes information about you, "and you can manage custom ad settings - at least, to some extent.
• Your Interests: If you select this tab, you'll see topics, such as real estate, finance, food, and education, which are collected from ads or promotional material that you previously clicked on. To delete a topic, hover the mouse over the option and select the "X" at the top right. The same principle applies to the "Advertisers" tab.
• Your Information: There are two tabs here which both relate to your online privacy and security. The first tab, "About you", lets you choose whether Facebook can use your relationship status, employer, job title, or training in targeted ads. The second tab, "Your Categories", includes automatically generated topic lists that the social network deems relevant for ad placement - all of these lists can be hovered over and deleted.
• Ad setup: To thwart targeted ads, even more, consider saying no to all of the options below.

Another section worth mentioning is under the " About Me " tab in the main menu of the Facebook account. Here you can choose to make the information public (whether globally or to your friends), or only available to you. This information includes your date of birth, relationship status, contact details, and place of residence.

Protect yourself on Twitter

Under the "Settings and privacy" tab, you will find a series of options and changes you can implement to improve the security of your account.

• Login Verification: After you log in, Twitter will ask you for additional information to confirm your identity to reduce the risk of your account being compromised.
• Verify Password Reset: For added security, you must confirm your email address or phone number when resetting your password.
• Privacy and Security: You can deselect location tracking and prevent your locations from showing at the same time you send a tweet, and there is also an option to remove all past location data from tweets posted to your history.
  In this section, you will also find " Personalization and Data ", which allows you to control - to a certain extent - how the social network personalizes content, collects data and information that is shared with third parties. You have the option of choosing not to display personalized ads, but the main setting you need to consider is sharing.
• Apps & Sessions: Under this tab, you can see which third-party services, if any, are logged into your account, as well as which devices your Twitter account is actively logged into.
  There is also an interesting section under " Your Twitter Data ". Once you enter your password, you can see the compilation of Twitter interests and advertising partners based on your activities.

It is also possible to request your complete data archive under the main settings tab.

Protect yourself on Instagram

To give your Instagram account a  privacy boost, there are a few changes you can implement.

By default, everyone can see the photos and videos on your Instagram account. By going to Settings and then Account Privacy, you can change this to ensure that only people you trust can see your content.

If your account is public, anyone can see and comment on your images and videos. However, you can block people you prefer not to interact with.

Internet of things

The Internet of Things (IoT) started with mobile devices, including our smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches. Today, IoT encompasses much more, from smart lights to smart voice-activated speakers and home hubs, such as Google Home and Amazon Echo.

Here are some tips to improve the Antivirus Software security of your connected home and prevent your products from being compromised, your information from being stolen, or your IoT products from being added to botnets:

• Keep IoT devices password protected. Default credentials - unfortunately often still at stake when it comes to IoT providers - are an easy way for hackers to compromise a device. The first and easiest way to protect your devices is to change these credentials as soon as possible.
• It is also essential to ensure that the firmware of your IoT device, as well as the software of your router, are up to date.
• Consider running all your IoT devices on a separate home network. Thus, in the event of a compromise, the damage can be limited.
• If your IoT device does not require an internet connection to work, turn it off. (Unfortunately, this is rare these days)
• If you no longer need an IoT device or have upgraded it, perform a factory reset and remove the old devices from your network.
• Always check the default settings for new products. The default options - such as implied consent to send seller data and usage metrics - may be beneficial to the seller, but not to your privacy.
  
  

It's your turn

The threats to our privacy and security are constantly evolving, and within a few years, things can change for the better - or for the worse. It's a constant push and pulls game between governments and tech giants when the conversation turns around encryption; cyber attackers are evolving and inventing new ways to hack us. And some countries prefer to suppress the idea of ​​individual privacy rather than protect it.

In a world where many of us have been asked to quickly change our work practices and do our jobs from home, research suggests cyber incidents are on the increase and many of us are unaware of best security practices, and that if we don't take basic precautions, we risk not only our personal devices but also the professional systems used in business.

Fortunately, the threat to our privacy is now recognized by tech companies and many organizations, for-profit and not, have taken it upon themselves to develop tools for us to use to improve our personal security - and it's now. it's up to us to do it.