How to protect your privacy on social media

_{Posted on April 11, 2023}

It’s always a good notion to keep up with the latest IT security breaches and trends. Ontario Tech IT Services works hard to ensure that our community is cyber-safe and that all students, faculty, and staff are aware of potential threats. But it isn’t always enough. We, as a community, must do our bit to protect the information we access through social media.

Mobile devices, such as smartphones, laptops, tablets, portable hard drives, and USB keys, can hold a huge amount of sensitive information and also permit the sharing of this information. Mobile devices are increasingly powerful and can hold massive amounts of data. They are also small, which means they are easy to lose or steal. 

Read tips on how to protect yourself and our Ontario Tech community when accessing social media apps:

• Read privacy policy: Familiarize yourself with the social media platform's privacy policies you are using or signing up for. Be sure to understand what information is being collected and how it is used and to what other organization it is being disclosed.
• Tighten your privacy settings: Check the default settings before usage to make sure you are not being exposed to vulnerabilities such as your current location. Some apps even request access to your contacts, calendar, photos, cameras, and microphone. Turn off these options if they aren't needed to use the app, and close your apps when you're not using them to further limit information sharing. 
• Review settings often: Remember to review privacy settings occasionally as they do change and adjust your settings accordingly.
• Make better passwords: Choose stricter passwords that are hard to decode. There are many ideologies you can use to create a complex password that you can remember. If you have a hard time remembering, use a password manager tool.  
• Turn on Multi-factor Authentication (MFA): Investigate if the app you are using offers an MFA feature, most do. Make sure you activate it as a secondary authentication method.
• Clean up your apps: Make a habit to clean up your apps periodically. Go through your phone and close apps you no longer use. You can also request the company to delete your data as your data may remain on the company’s servers.
• Be mindful of what you share: Oversharing your personal information can put you at risk. For more details visit our social media page.