Have you ever wondered how many intimate details about you can be exposed if a hacker breaks into your social networks? This possibility is a nightmare for most users, and especially for such applications – which, when hacked, lose much credibility. For this reason, these apps always seek to improve ways of protection for their users, who do not always take full advantage of these features. Also, there are always a number of tips for the user to protect themselves.
To get an idea, 78% of Instagram users, according to Kaspersky’s report, leave their session open on mobile devices, meaning they stay connected even after leaving the app – which means “hacking free” if hack into your device.
In addition to cybercriminals, exposing personal information on the social network, such as your favorite restaurant or the street of your home, can provide very valuable data for “real life” criminals.
To protect your social networks, especially Instagram, check out 9 tips ranging from security practices to reflection on the need to maintain a public profile on the platform:
- Keep up to date: For the latest security, privacy, and other shortcuts that enhance your online experience, it’s important to keep up with updates available from both your smartphone and used apps;
- Password focus: It is important to have a strong, long and unique password set for each service that is changed regularly. We know this is boring, but only so that cybercriminals have a hard time deciphering them. To help you organize these credentials, it’s worth having a password manager;
- 2-step authentication to sign in: To increase account protection, it is important to enable 2-step authentication. Whenever you try to sign in to your account from a different device, the app will ask you for a code, which is received by SMS in most cases. With this setting, you also get notification for all email login attempts.
- Public or private account: This may be controversial, but do you use Instagram for your business or portfolio? If not, you probably don’t need a public account to share photos, videos, and intimacies with your friends. It is a welcome change in 2020;
- Get rid of dangerous spam: To protect your account against data theft attacks (the famous phishing), be careful what comes directly to your “Direct Messages” by not clicking on any links that were not sent by email contacts. Trust – and yet it’s worth asking if your colleague actually sent that link, because he or she may have been hacked and spreading spam unknowingly.
- Learn how to differentiate a fake Instagram email: Instagram settings let you check which messages the social network has sent to your email in the last two weeks. To verify this, select “Instagram emails” in the “Security” settings and make sure that message is indeed authentic;
- Edit your follower list: Do you have those followers you don’t know where they come from or understand what they post? Edit your follower list under “Privacy” and select “Accounts you follow”. In the subscribers tab, search and delete anyone who doesn’t want to see your posts or stories;
- Hide unwanted users: If you want to keep a public profile, you can block or restrict access to your account by unknown people. Just click the three dots in the upper right corner of the specific user’s profile and select “Block” or “Restrict.” But this option has a limit; your profile will still be visible to the person if they are not on Instagram;
- Final tip: It’s no use protecting your Instagram account and setting it up in the best way if you don’t do the same on other social media accounts as well. That’s because authorization from one can lead to hackers accessing the other, and images that can be shared across multiple platforms without the same security standards. Stay tuned!