Protecting yourself online

Online safety is something that my parents were always telling me about when I was younger. We first got the internet when I was 10/11 and straight away I started to use it to interact with other people (on a beanie baby forum – little Hayley was so cool) and my parents made sure to tell me not to use my real name online, share any photographs of myself or give out any other personal details such as my name, address, telephone number or which school I went to.

Back then, social media didn't really exist. Nowadays, I'm a part of so many different social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and of course there's my blog. Obviously, safety is still a massive issue and even though it has A LOT a social benefits, it’s hard to ignore the drawbacks that come with it, so I do my best to keep my private information to myself. I don't give out my address, the name of where I work or give any information about my family or friends. With my blog, I only give out my name and obviously there's photos of me on there too but I make sure I don't share any photos of other people without their prior consent.

Another thing you have to be extremely careful about is keeping my locational details private. We upload so many photos onto Instagram and Facebook these days that it’d be hard not to figure out where we are at any given time. I don’t mind my reader knowing that I live in Birmingham or anything like that, but my street and door number are way more personal and should only really be shared with family and other people in your trusted circle. If you’re guilty of uploading images with your phone a lot, then it might be worth disabling geotagging on your phone and it’s tantamount to leaving your door unlocked or giving people a free pass to stalking you.

There are a lot of ways to safeguard your details on your blog and on social media, google is only a click away.

What do you do to protect yourself online?

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