Playing safe on the social media

By Niran Adedokun

I woke up one morning a few months back to a pile of messages from friends and associates who had received an e-mail purportedly sent by me seeking financial assistance until I returned from a trip to the United Kingdom.

The e-mail which was received by scores of my contacts solicited for an amount in the neighbourhood of N160, 000 for the urgent treatment of a female relation whom the hackers claimed was involved in an accident. And quite predictably, the scammers requested the mail recipients to contact me by email since it would be impossible to reach me by any other means while in the UK. How very ridiculous!
Of course, a lot of my friends smelt the scam instantly. While some knew that I didn’t travel, others were sure that I always had a UK line on me and that if any emergency arose, I would rather call than send an e-mail, so the email instantly came across as the scam that it was.
I would never be able to explain how traumatised that day was for me. I tried to change my password and it worked, but just for a while. Some thirty minutes later when I tried to log into my email again (it was my yahoo account, by the way) the hackers had changed my password and taken effective control of my email account. I have not been able to use that account since then.  I would never be able to retrieve some of the information I lost to that e-mail and that is such a shame.
I was however shocked to discover that most of my friends were used to such stories. Nearly everyone had a story to tell when I explained what I had been through and at some point; I began to look like some Johnny Just Come who didn’t know how things worked. I have come to discover that as fun and hip as it is, this Internet and social networking age comes with its own fair share of burdens, some of which do not only deprive people of their privacy but even put them in harm’s way. We have even heard of instances where people have lost their precious lives on account of dubious social network relationships. It is therefore becoming increasingly important to be on our guard on social network sites.
For instance, how much information do we give out about ourselves on social media platforms? I have asked a few of my friends, for example, if they would tell a total stranger they met on the street stuff about their family, work, love life, hobbies, dislikes, friends, enemies and what have you. Of course they wouldn’t but then how is that different from what we do when we share this information on Facebook and other social media platforms where we meet ‘friends’ that we hardly know?
Increasingly, there is the need for us to watch the information that we share about ourselves and those around us on the social media. One of the first things to avoid when online is sharing Too Much Information. This is important if we are to prevent identity theft which has become a very common occurrence on Facebook and Twitter, especially. Birth dates, home addresses, personal phone numbers are some of the details that we should avoid sharing with the general public on the social media as risks from such exposure may even extend to the physical.
We should also consider frequently checking up on our own identities and ensure that someone somewhere is not doing something funny. One could embark on a web search just to be sure that no one else has stolen their identity. You could also set up a Google Alert account which would send you instant e-mails the moment anyone other than yourself attempts to use your identify.
It is also important for us to verify with friends and contacts whenever we suspect that someone might have tampered with their identity.  Sometimes, you get an email from someone that knows you or thinks that you know him/her and then you proceed to share vital information including the financial only for you to discover that the e-mail came from the wrong person.
In the past few months for instance, countless Facebook and Twitter accounts of people that I know have been cloned by fraudsters. The right thing to do in the circumstance is to check with the concerned friend by sending an e-mail or calling them up to verify if they actually tampered with their account or if this was a breach.
Every user of these platforms should endeavour to maintain a good reputation by avoiding posting anything that may compromise their public standing. The negative public reaction generated by a supposedly harmless tweet by Nigeria’s former Education Minister and former World Bank boss, Oby Ezekwesili is a case in point. It is better to ensure that your opinion is clearly thought out before you proceed to share your feelings online as these platforms are so fast and liberal that posts that you delete a few minutes after posting might have travelled into the hands of people who may use it against you, hence, the need to be sure you really want to share that opinion before you do so.
Thankfully, however, every social media platform has secure privacy settings which enable you to control those who have access to personal information, photos, pictures, friend and postings. Whether you are a new or an old user, it is important that you check out the security options that are available rather than sticking to the default settings that are provided for us at the beginning. By doing that you could be saving yourself and your loved ones a whole lot of trouble. It is one of those sticky situations when a stitch in time would save you the trouble of nine. Always be security-conscious, even offline and have a great week.