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Home » Blog » Cyber security month | How to safely use social media

Cyber security month | How to safely use social media

Social media has become an undeniable part of our lives. On our channels, you can see a lot of photos and videos, from spontaneous holiday snapshots to an evening out. We leave nothing to the imagination. As nice as it is to share your life with the people around you, the danger is always lurking.
To make you aware of the dangers of using social media, and what you can do to limit these dangers, we have seven tips!

Tip 1: Friend Requests

Do you want to use social media safely? Then don’t accept all friend requests that come along. While it is nice to receive friend requests from many people, it is necessary not to accept all friend requests that come along. You can never be sure who is hiding behind an account’s name and profile picture.

Cybercriminals today send friend requests via social media to gain access to personal information that you share with friends and family. They use this information to carefully scam you.

In addition, cybercriminals want to befriend you on social media to send messages via the chat function of the platform. These messages contain links that cause malicious software to be installed on your laptop, phone, or tablet. This is a form of phishing.

To prevent strangers from getting all the details about your life into their hands, you can set your account to private. If you do this, people can only befriend you if you accept the friend request yourself. This prevents all kinds of snoopers from getting information that is not intended for them.

Tip 2: Privacy settings

You can adjust the privacy settings to your preferences on all social media platforms. For example, you can indicate who can or cannot view your photos, whether the app can track your location, and much more. By doing this, you can be sure that the app protects your privacy the way you want it, and you can safely use social media.

Tip 3: Use a VPN

To keep as little personal information as possible lying around on the internet, you can use a VPN. A VPN connection is a secure connection between you and the internet. The VPN connection creates a secure tunnel in which your data is encrypted and sent. Because it is encrypted, it is no longer possible for outsiders to monitor your internet behavior. For example, if you have a face-to-face conversation via social media, or try to log into your account, cybercriminals will not be able to retrieve this information.

Tip 4: Personal data

Be careful about sharing personal information. When you post your data on social media, this data is available to all your followers. Unexpectedly, there may be a cyber criminal among your contacts who use this data to scam you. If you have an open account, an account where anyone can view your page, it is absolutely important not to share important personal information, such as your phone number.

By not sharing all your personal information on social media, you can safely use social media.

Tip 5: Once posted, always posted

You may have experienced it. You have a post in mind that you want to share with your followers via social media. You’re not sure if you should post, but you’re taking the benefit of the doubt. Afterward, you can be glad you posted the post, but it can also be that you regret it.

If you regret that you have placed a certain post on your social media page, you can always delete it. Yet this is not entirely true. Once you’ve made a post, this post will stay on the internet forever. No longer on your own social media page, but the post can always pop up somewhere. Hence the saying “once posted, always posted”. Therefore, think carefully in advance about whether you should post a post or not.

Tip 6: Use a strong password

Safe use of social media is already possible with simple solutions. One of the simplest things you can do is to use a strong password. To help you create a strong password, we have a few tips for you:
1. The more characters you use for your password, the better
1. Use both upper and lower case letters, spaces, special characters, and numbers
1. Do not use information about yourself to create a password, such as birth name_birth year

Safe use of social media with GOOSE VPN

With GOOSE VPN you can safely use social media. GOOSE VPN is a Dutch provider of VPN connections. We think it is important that everyone can use social media safely. That’s why our VPN connections are easy to use, reliable, and also affordable.

GOOSE VPN is happy to help you take the security of your social media to a higher level. By turning on our VPN connection, your internet traffic, and with it your social media traffic, is sent through a secure tunnel of GOOSE VPN. In this way, together we ensure that cybercriminals have less and less chance of being able to keep an eye on you.

Sign up with GOOSE VPN

Safe use of social media is now more important than ever before. So sign up now at GOOSE VPN with a 30-day money-back guarantee, to make the security of your social media use even better.

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