Dude, It’s Social Media, Open the door!

Social media is the new hot trend online. Whether it’s on your PC, iPhone, Droid, Blackberry, or cell phone, social media wants to take your private life and make it public. Everyone is doing it so it must be safe and if you don’t you’ll be asked a million times, “Why aren’t you on Facebook?” Still, like anything else, if you don’t know what you’re doing you open the door for (personal privacy) violation.

Even at a young age I was aware of personal privacy. When I was about 13 or 14 I got a CB radio for my birthday because I thought the concept of an open medium for people to communicate was pretty cool. (I’m sure I didn’t express it that eloquently back then.) Still, I was aware these people were in fact strangers. Even before my parents had the “you don’t know these people so don’t give them any information about yourself” talk with me, I was very careful about hiding my age, where I lived, my real name, etc. This was in fact my first brush with social media.

Little did I know how big it would get. Now with the countless outlets for social media online and everything being “indexed” by Google, it’s hard to keep some things private.  For instance, I found a old friend online the other day and sent her a message asking if she had kids, where she was living now, who she married, etc.  Before she could reply I did a Facebook, Google, and Yahoo search and got all the answers to my questions and more. A little freaky. (Hopefully she wasn’t freaked out.)

Another great example. Foursquare, a new (to me anyway, I resisted for some time) social media app where you “check in” real time to real places and get points, allows you to add locations that it doesn’t already have in it’s database. It has some good privacy features, like allowing you to check in as “off the grid”, thereby hiding where you are, but you have to know to use them.

I thought about adding my home as a location but I wanted to be sure I could “hide” it. When I couldn’t quickly see how to do that I decided not to add it. However, I did a search for “home” near my current location. Four entries came up (just within my local area), with GPS locations, addresses, and “Mayors” listed. (A Mayor is a person who checks in to a location a lot.) I realized these “Mayors” just published their home locations to the world.  As I was looking at each one someone checked in, virtually telling me, a stranger, they were home. Also, by looking as when the mayor last checked in I could just as easily tell who wasn’t home.

So while all this social media can be fun don’t let the anonymity of the Internet give you a false sense of security. Remember, you are only anonymous until you are not, and if you start posting about your private life you lose that anonymity while those who are reading your information retain it. My suggestion, make sure you have someone you trust and who knows about social media privacy check your account settings for all the various sites and apps you use. They can give you some feedback on your social media services and you may be exposing more than you realize. Sometimes without a friend watching your back you may never know just how much personal data you’re putting online.

(When looking for computer help please stay away from people who you describe as “knows about this stuff”, “is good with computers”, or “whiz kid”. We call those people “Best Buy Geek Squad”. Make sure you could describe them as a “Online Privacy Expert” or “Computer Security Professional”.)