Protecting Yourself on Social Media – Friend Requests And Messages

Social Media & Friend Requests When young people, first begin using social networking they often believe that the more followers they have on their social sites the greater their status among their friends will be. However the more friends you have online the greater the opportunity for misuse, over share, privacy trampling, and digital drama. ( Even if you have your privacy settings enabled to the highest/strictest settings by accepting or allowing someone to become a friend can undermine these settings and allow them to more, or even all, of your data contained within your social media account – this includes your personal details, photographs and posts etc. Do you know the person who has sent the friend request? If not ask yourself do I really want to have them as a Friend on social media and grant them access to my data? Why have they made a friend request – what has caused them to send this request to me? Even if the person sending a friend request is someone who you appear to know (from their profile name and picture) it might still be someone else (particularly if the person you know has poor security around their other online profiles i.e. Photographs not protected etc) Can you verify with that person that the request is genuine by another means - such as asking them in person, or via a text or phone call to that person. Ask yourself, would I be happy for a complete stranger to have access to all my photographs, posts and personal data? What could that content be potentially used for?

Facebook Friend Requests In Facebook click on the padlock icon at the top of your timeline, select Privacy from the left hand, and under Who can contact me select edit next to the desired setting. Facebook has five settings (some have less) These are Everyone, Only Me, Friends, Friends of Friends and custom. In terms of Friend requests there are currently only two settings Friends of Friends or Everyone. Changing this to Friends of Friends will restrict complete strangers from randomly friend requesting you – however you still need to be vigilant.

Who Can See Your Friends? If you are going to set your settings to Friends of Friends then it is also worth adjusting who can see your friends list. On the timeline select Friends tab > select Pencil icon > Edit privacy > select settings from drop down and change who can see your friends list (options are Only Me, Public, Friends & Custom)

Twitter Following If your Twitter account is public then you cannot have any say who follows you. However if you set your tweets to Protected then you can approve who follows you. Highlight Profile and settings (Top right of page) > Security & Privacy (left hand column) > Privacy > Tick ‘Protect my tweets’ box > also worth adjusting photo tagging setting in the same pane.

Instagram Following By default, anyone can view your profile and posts on Instagram. You can make your posts private so that only followers you approve can see them. If your posts are set to private, only your approved followers will see. To set your posts to private from the Instagram app: Turn on the Posts are Private setting by checking the box and then tap the check mark to save your changes Things to keep in mind about private posts: Private posts you share to social networks may be visible to the public depending on your privacy settings for those networks. For example, a post you share to Twitter that was set to private on Instagram may be visible to the people who can see your Twitter posts.share to social networks Once you make your posts private, people will have to send you a follow request if they want to see your posts, your followers list or your following list. Apple iOS 1)Go to your profile by tapping 2) Tap 3) Turn on the Private Account setting Android 1) Go to your profile by tapping 2) Tap 3) Turn on the Private Account setting Windows Phone 1) Go to your profile by tapping 2) Tap Edit Profile 3)Turn on the Posts are Private setting by checking the box and then tap the check mark to save your changes

Direct Messages / Messenger Services As well as offering regular social media services most of these mainstream sites also offer private/direct messaging services. It used to be that Facebook allowed you to have settings that restricted the messenger service so that only friends could direct message you (i.e. This conversation is only visible between parties invited to that particular message and doesn’t go on your public timeline (or wall as it used to be called) However under its current version this feature is no longer available – this effectively means anyone on Facebook can send you a message. However there are some settings you can enable to filter messages. Select Messages from the speech bubble icon in main taskbar.

Your Facebook message service effectively has two Folders Inbox and Other (think Inbox and Junk like a traditional account) To ensure that all unwanted messages go into your “Other” folder it is necessary to make adjustments to your settings. As before access privacy settings > under “whose messages do I want Filtered into my inbox?” > select edit > change setting to “Strict Filtering”

Direct Messages / Messenger Services In a similar vein both Instagram & Twitter allow for the sending of direct messages. Twitter You can start a private conversation or create a group conversation with anyone who follows you. Anyone in a conversation can send Direct Messages to the group. Everyone in a group can see all messages, even if everyone doesn’t follow each other. In group conversations, anyone in the conversation can add other participants. Newly added participants won’t see the prior history of the conversation. Some accounts, particularly businesses on Twitter, have enabled a setting to receive Direct Messages from anyone. You can send a Direct Message to these users even if they don’t follow you. In both group and one-on-one conversations, you cannot be in a conversation with someone you block. Instagram Direct Instagram Direct lets you send messages to one or more people. You can send the following things as a message on Instagram Direct: Photos or videos from your camera roll or the in-app camera, Posts you see in Feed, Profiles, Text, Hashtags & LocationsPhotos or videos from your camera roll or the in-app cameraPosts you see in FeedProfiles HashtagsLocations The people you message will get a notification. To see messages you've sent with Instagram Direct, tap in the top right of Feed. You can manage the messages you've sent and received from here.Feedmanage the messages Photos and videos sent using Instagram Direct are only visible to people who can already see them. When you send a post from a private account as a message, only people who follow the account will be able to see it. Posts sent with Instagram Direct can't be shared through Instagram to other sites like Facebook or Twitter. You're not able to tag people in messages, and messages sent using Instagram Direct won't appear on hashtag and location pages.tag people hashtag and location pages

Further Advice These are just a few helpful hints how to stay safer online and protect yourself as well as friends and family. We recommend that everyone takes a look at their privacy settings as sometimes they change when sites are upgraded. There is plenty of information out there with regards to online safety, both on the mainstream Social Media sites help pages as well as a number of dedicated websites