I LIKE to tell friends that when aliens come to take over the Earth one day by using Facebook to control our minds, I and a handful of like-minded holdouts will lead the rebellion to retake the planet.
I don’t do Facebook. I don’t trust it, and I look askance at most other forms of time-consuming social media, including LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram or Vine. I do have a Twitter account—but that’s about it, and I use it mostly to monitor news sources.
But for me, Facebook holds a special place of disdain, mostly for the many reasons I offered in this column back in 2010.
“I don’t like Facebook because I find it insipid—mediocre in concept, design and execution,” I wrote at the time. “I also question the wisdom of encouraging people to post private information on public pages without warning them that this is exactly what excites stalkers, burglars and other unsavory characters that prowl the Internet. But mostly, I resent being pressed to sign up for a service simply to get at the content inside that isn’t even generated by Facebook.”
Those reasons have not changed, but six years down the road, I’m realistic enough to know that nothing I or anyone else says can stop the stampede of users who habitually head for Facebook every day.
So my philosophy these days is, if you want to use Facebook or any other social network, knock yourself out—but be smart about it.
But smart is exactly not what a good number of social media network users are, a September 2015 survey by the security company Kaspersky Lab shows.
The online survey of 18,000 users showed that almost a third or 30 percent of social network users share their posts and other personal information with everybody who is online—not just their friends. This leaves them vulnerable to cybercriminals, who can use that information to do real harm.
Increasingly, governments, too, are paying attention to your social media accounts.
On one extreme, Uganda shut down social media earlier this month on the day of its presidential elections as “a security measure to avert lies.” The incumbent president apparently didn’t want people going on Facebook and Twitter to question the election results and to incite violence.
In the United States, the Department of Homeland Security is building tools to more aggressively examine the social media accounts of all visa applicants and those seeking asylum or refugee status in the United States for possible ties to terrorist organizations.
Posts on Twitter, Facebook and other social media can reveal a wealth of information that can be used to identify potential terrorists, but travel officials and human rights advocates say this kind of scrutiny would prejudice ordinary people who post legitimate criticism of American foreign policy.
Still, the biggest danger by far criminals lurking in cyberspace.
“Social network users are playing a dangerous game by… giving strangers easy access to their personal details and private information,” says David Emm, principal security researcher at Kapsersky. “With social media profiles containing a raft of insight – from birthdays through to addresses and holiday plans – It wouldn’t take much digging for a cybercriminal to find and exploit valuable information, or steal your identity for their own gain. This is even easier if you have unwittingly made them your friend.
To ensure your social network sharing doesn’t leave you exposed to danger, Kaspersky advises Internet users to be cautious about whom they befriend and trust on these sites.
If in doubt, don’t accept a friend request or click on a link that you are not expecting. It is also essential that privacy settings within social network accounts are at their highest, to ensure that you are sharing your status updates only with your real friends.
Other tips specific to Facebook:
Use available privacy tools to limit those who can see your posts and posts in which you are tagged.
Verify every Facebook contact. Make sure that the person you’re talking to really is the person you think they are.
Never disclose anything about your bank accounts, credit cards, debit cards, or other financial information on Facebook.
Be wary of strangers, and don’t add or accept friend requests from people that you don’t know.
Turn off Facebook Messenger location logging on iOS and Android devices—unless you want your exact whereabouts open to prying eyes. Chin Wong
Column archives and blog at: http://www.chinwong.com