Techworks Consulting, Inc. Blog

You can do everything in your power to secure your social media accounts and lock down your privacy settings. Still, at the end of the day, social media users expose themselves to a torrent of information and content every time they log on. As a civilization, we’ve never really had something like this before. These platforms curate content that the user wants to see to keep the user coming back and staying longer. It’s inherently designed to be enticing and addicting, which is dangerous for certain individuals.

Then, there are scams and an endless stream of grifts that pose a wide range of additional problems for users.

Let’s talk about ways you and those you care about can be safer on social media.

Social media is constantly evolving, and if the big social networks had it their way, it would be the only place people go when they log onto the Internet. Whether you have strong feelings for or against social media, or perhaps you are indifferent, it’s important to understand how to protect yourself when using social media.

Social media can be remarkably overstimulating, and for some users this is a problem which is difficult to navigate without giving it up entirely. If you want a nice middle-ground to terminating your account entirely, you can instead curate your news feed by unfollowing accounts that don’t enrich your day. Let’s go over how you can do this.

Facebook is many people’s favorite—or at least most used—app and it does bring value to people by letting them keep tabs on friends and family, or grow their businesses. It has grown to be one of the largest, most successful software technology companies in the world. Unfortunately, with that type of exposure comes the responsibility of securing massive amounts of personal data. In this quest, they leave a lot to be decided. Today, we take a look at the situation Facebook is in as they are dealing with one of the largest data leaks in history.

We’ve been talking about Facebook quite a bit on our blog, and for good reason - we’re all concerned with our privacy, and Facebook has been notoriously front-and-center when it comes to Internet privacy. In this post we will break down Facebook’s privacy settings to help you gain control over your personal identity while using the social network.

Whether you love, hate, or are just indifferent about Facebook (no judgement here), it’s worth configuring and locking down your account to control what others can see about you.

Facebook is front and center when it comes to privacy-related issues worldwide, so in this blog we are going to discuss how you can take control of your personal information. This post will also serve as an excellent starting point for anyone who doesn’t understand 2-factor authentication.

It’s not a secret (well, not anymore) that the big tech companies have influence. These companies, that include Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook, have been in the spotlight more and more as the argument of data privacy has gotten louder and louder. Public sentiment is starting to blow back on their business model--and since, Yahoo, once the predominant name in Internet-based services, was broken up and sold to Verizon for cents on the dollar after being at the center of the largest data breach in recorded history--there have been rumblings that there has to be something done to protect the public from major publicly-traded technology companies that use individual’s data in ways that some deem unethical.

In many ways, social media is the defining characteristic of the information age. It has transformed the way people communicate, market their products and services, and it has brought a litany of issues into the public consciousness. On the other side of the coin, social media currently costs many business billions of dollars a year in lost productivity. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of social media, and how your business can put yourself in a net-positive position regarding the technology.

Have you ever gotten Facebook requests from strange people who you don’t know? While it might be tempting to give them the benefit of the doubt--after all, maybe they know a friend of yours--it’s best to keep strangers off of your page when you can. In order to give your page, the flexibility to accept friend requests from people you may know, and protect it from strangers, you can implement a “follow” feature, and limit who can send you friend requests.

Since 2014, Facebook has quietly featured Safety Check, a crisis response tool that lets users in areas struck by natural disasters or other emergencies to confirm their safety on the social network. Originally, Facebook itself would have to activate a Safety Check, but that has changed--the power to activate a safety check is now in the hands of the stricken community.

One of the most devastating elements of any disaster is not knowing if affected friends and loved ones are safe. Safety Check is meant to reduce the fear of this unknown by giving users a simple way to confirm that they are okay, and to check in to make sure the people they cared about were safe as well. However, when Facebook retained total control over the tool’s activation, it was put into effect a total of 39 times worldwide between December of 2014 and December of 2015.

Unfortunately, this number is clearly far too low for a tool meant to chart disasters around the world. As a result, Facebook took steps to put the power to activate Safety Check in the hands of those who would need it most--the communities affected by the crisis in question.

Utilizing a two-step system, Facebook will first receive confirmation that an event is taking place through a network of third-party organizations, and then analyze the chatter put out by the community in the affected area to determine if Safety Check is warranted. This new, fully-automated process has been put to use 328 times since first being tested in June of 2016.

Disasters, unfortunately, are a terrible fact of life on this planet. It is difficult to be prepared for anything, but with tools like Facebook’s Safety Check, we can at least be informed that our loved ones are safe.