Social Media and Security
Social media and digital networks have been an undeniable part of our lives for quite some time. These platforms, which allow us to reach the entire world from the comfort of our homes, facilitate our daily lives while also providing us with enjoyable moments and helping us advance our businesses.
Of course, we won’t delve into the benefits of this topic, which we could write a book about. In this article, we’ll focus on two questions: How secure are social platforms? How do we maximize our security on these platforms?
How Do We Maximize the Security of Our Social Media Accounts?
Opening our social media accounts and following certain steps afterwards will provide us with maximum security. You can also achieve this by following the 4 basic tips below:
1- Passwords we set when creating our accounts should be absolutely unpredictable. For example, passwords such as birth date, phone number, place of residence, or hometown are quite inadequate and should not be used for security reasons.
2- Another layer of protection to be used after strong passwords on social media accounts is two-factor authentication. Two-factor authentication is a constantly changing code that you need to enter after logging into your accounts. Two-factor authentication is generally set up using phones, a code is sent to your phone via SMS by the relevant platform after logging into your account and you need to enter this code. Of course, we can also maximize security in two-factor authentication. Our recommendation in this regard is code generation tools such as Google Authenticator, which are harder for hackers to access.
3- Store your passwords in hard-to-reach places. We will talk a lot about cloud-based password management services today. We manage many accounts today and we know that using different passwords is safer, but remembering so many passwords can of course be difficult. At exactly this point, plugins and applications come to our aid that allow us to access these passwords whenever we want by storing our passwords on a cloud-based server, such as LastPass.
4- Our last topic, which we will mention many times in our article and actually contains the most important issue, do not establish any connection with any account or content that is not trustworthy. There are many malicious thoughts aimed at deceiving and feeding us on digital platforms. We should not click on, touch, or in short, communicate with any link that is adorned with beautiful sentences we see in messages received on our accounts or while browsing on social media, and that is enticing but not trustworthy in any way.
What Are the Personal Social Media Platforms We All Use?
Lives Lived in the Digital World… How Secure Are Our Personal Social Media Platforms?
In today’s world, social media is shaping our identities and occupying such a significant space in our lives that it almost determines our lifestyle. Social media is gradually replacing the social life we have become accustomed to. Most of us cannot deny spending a considerable amount of time glued to our phones throughout the day 🙂
Initially used to reconnect with old friends and stay in touch with loved ones living far away, these platforms are now mostly used to meet new people and introduce ourselves to them. In fact, social media has become so influential that it can impact our identities and lifestyles significantly!
While social media can sometimes make our lives easier, offer us a more enjoyable and fun life, and bring the whole world into our phones, tablets, or computers, the consequences of using it incorrectly and recklessly can unfortunately lead to very dark scenarios…
The Role of Social Media for Businesses and Organizations
Visibility is Everything…!
When we glance through the dustiest pages of history, a few things will undoubtedly catch our attention in every era. One of these is the struggle for survival – the basics of life such as food, shelter, and sustenance. This fundamental aim, crucial for individuals, has also been essential for any kind of organization, institution, association, company, and so forth, acting in unity.
In this piece, I will address these aspects from the perspective of an organization. Commercial activities like product sales and service promotion revolve around how effectively institutions with profit-oriented goals can present themselves and their offerings to their target audience, leaving a lasting impression. Without delving deep into the history of advertising to avoid boredom and digression, it’s worth noting that the success of a business in marketing its products or services, and consequently reaching its potential customer base due to brand recognition, positively impacts its revenue and ensures a prolonged existence.
In the past, companies that determined various advertising strategies for visibility often had to settle for local customers due to technological limitations. However, today, with the proper utilization of technology, the internet, and the byproduct of social media, companies can reach vast audiences and effortlessly showcase their products or services to humanity. We’ve all witnessed firms that capitalize on this opportunity, reaching out to global audiences with their offerings, perhaps sounding cliché, but the world’s abundance is now just a click away.
Now, imagine owning a shop on the busiest street in your city. All eyes are on you; people queue for hours to access your products. At night, you close up and head home to rest, but as mentioned earlier, in this city, all eyes are on you – not just the admirers, but also those with malicious intent. You secure your store, activate your security systems, and leave with peace of mind. Now, let’s look at it from another angle. To keep up with the evolving world, you’ve created an e-commerce website for your store, along with social media accounts. Do you think there’s a difference in security between your business’s e-commerce site and your physical store?
Is it a Gateway to the World in Our Pockets? Or an Enemy That Leaves Us Vulnerable to the Evils of the World?
Our Immune System Protects Us from Diseases!
As we’ve discussed, social media and digital platforms are vast oceans and great opportunities that eliminate barriers such as distance, language, religion, and race, allowing us to reach the entire world easily. However, there’s also a dark side to consider; How safe is this wonderful opportunity?
The sole reason internet and social networks appeal to us is the sense of freedom they provide, the priceless feeling of accessing information quickly. However, from another perspective, can internet and social networks be utilized as a center for manipulation, coercion, and surveillance of people’s every move by malicious individuals? Our answer: The more conscious and careful we are, the freer and safer we become.
Primary Dangers We May Encounter on Social Media and Digital Platforms: Scammers, Thieves, and Suspicious Strangers.
Yes, digital networks and social media platforms have the potential to be dangerous places, but as we mentioned earlier, our immune system that protects us from diseases is our cautious and secure behavior. In this regard, our immune system involves being careful and safe. Especially in our personal social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.), it’s beneficial for us not to have very close relationships with people we don’t know in terms of privacy. If necessary, we can use our accounts discreetly and communicate with our circle. Using private accounts not only disconnects us from the online world but also helps protect us from unfamiliar and dangerous accounts.
Free Cheese is Found in Mousetraps!
The main goal of such malicious individuals is to seize our accounts and use them for their own purposes, and they have various methods to achieve this. We may not know how to fish, but the logic is simple and we all know it: attach an eye-catching bait to the end of the fishing line and wait for the fish to take the bait. Unfortunately, this fishing technique I mentioned is one of the most commonly used on digital platforms; it’s referred to as the ‘Phishing Technique’ in the literature. While going about your daily life unsuspectingly, you may come across a strange but enticing link filled with decorated and enticing phrases via your social media accounts or email address, and out of curiosity, you click on the link. Now, you’ve taken the bait, and it means your accounts have fallen into the wrong hands.
To avoid encountering such bad scenarios, it’s recommended to always be cautious and skeptical of external links. Sometimes, we unknowingly share too much data via our social media accounts, and we must protect such important data with the same care and attention. Otherwise, much bigger problems could arise than you’d ever imagined…
When We Lock Our Doors, We Feel Safe and Secure The Key to Our Social Media and Digital Platforms:
Passwords Just as every home or commercial establishment has a door and lock to make us, our loved ones, or our products feel safe, social media and all kinds of digital platforms serve the same purpose with the passwords we set for each platform. Passwords are essentially keys that we possess to keep all threats away from our accounts and to keep ourselves safe.
Now, I can almost hear you asking: ‘I have so many accounts that creating and remembering separate passwords for each one is impossible. Would it be a problem if all my passwords were the same?’ The answer to this question is quite simple: yes, it would be a problem. Imagine having a fantastic winter cabin where you spend holidays surrounded by nature, a summer house filled with joyful memories with your family, a dream car you’ve longed for and finally acquired a few months ago, and a successful business that enables you to have all these. Now, imagine all of them having the same key, and you realize that it has fallen into the hands of malicious individuals. What a disaster!
So, the answer to this problem is that yes, all our passwords should be different and unique. However, we use so many platforms that it can be quite difficult to remember all the passwords. In such cases, applications like LastPass, which serve as password managers and help keep your passwords safe and secure, come to the rescue.
Let me tell you a bit about LastPass. LastPass is a cloud-based password management service that encrypts and stores users’ passwords on the server, allowing them to access these passwords whenever they need. It also provides extensions and applications for various platforms and browsers. We all want to create strong and unpredictable passwords, and LastPass not only helps you with that but also allows you to securely store as many passwords as you want on its platform. And that’s not all it offers; you can also perform strong password analysis on the platform.
And once again, we say: ‘Yes, social media and digital networks have been an undeniable part of our lives for quite some time!’ While these platforms make it easier for us to navigate through our daily routines and allow us to reach the world from the comfort of our homes, they also assist us in enjoying leisure time or advancing our businesses. However, managing our social media accounts consciously and maximizing their security is in our hands. Our recommendation to you is: Keep your doors locked with the right keys, and don’t open your doors to just anyone!