Media Awareness#

Disclaimer#
These are habitual routines that you need to maintain to be effective.

4.3 Be Conscious of Your Presence on The Internet#

Broadly speaking, you can control who sees your information when it comes to social media. The things you post can reveal a lot about your life, so this article is intended to give a brief overview of what data you have control over and who can see it.

What is metadata: Broadly, this is data about data. This can include context or things used to describe a piece of data, such as a filename, timestamp, or location information.

Metadata can be very useful for organizing your own files. However, in aggregate, different kinds of metadata can be a risk to share publicly. especially when attached to your posts.

Social media is a great way to be able to connect with the people or the content you like, but what you post can reveal more about your life than you may intend to.

Location Data#

Location data attached to posts. Many modern phones include the location of where and when a photo was taken, and this data can be bundled in with an image uploaded to social media.

To remove location data (and other metadata) from images en masse, many tools exist online! For individual photos, however, you can simply remove location information using your phone.

Removing Location Data from an Image on IPhone#

Select an image in the Photos app.
Swipe up or click on More Options (the three dot menu in the top right) > Adjust Location.
Tap No Location.

You can also adjust the date and time of an image from the More Options menu.

Removing Location Data from an Image on Android#

Select an image in Google Photos App.
Swipe up or tap the Info icon > Edit Location.
Tap Remove Location, then tap Done.

Tags#

Not everything should be tagged. Locations and people should remain private. Let people know if they should not tag you in posts before it happens.

Who Can See Your Posts?#

Normally, social media profiles can be set to public or private. These enable your posts to be seen by the entire internet or your connections only, respectively. There can be more granular permissions depending on the app you use. You should only have a public profile if you have a specific reason for needing one. The default should be private. This prevents your posts from being indexed (discovered) by search engines, so someone can’t just search for you and find your profile as easily.

And remember… you can block people. Most sites allow blocks in such a way that it looks like your profile doesn’t even exist to them, which can be useful. There may also be more granular options depending on the site, such as muting or restricting users, which allows you the ability to approve if someone can comment on your posts, message you, or be notified if you are online. Depending on your situation, one of these options might be a safer choice.

Your activity on social media can reveal a lot about your own personal security. For a small example, announcing you are going on a vacation on social media is essentially a broadcast to anyone malicious that your home is empty and ripe for burglarizing.

While not all things can create this kind of risk, it’s important to think about what you say from an adversary’s point of view. How can they use the information you provide against you?

Oversharing online, such as with excessive personal detail or with moments of emotional vulnerability can also pose a significant risk. There are many people on the lookout for easy targets online, and what you post can be used to infer things about your behavior, identity, wants, likes and dislikes, et cetera. All are things that are harmless on their own, but combined can give someone a clear enough picture of you to target you further.

Most people don’t end up in a situation where someone anonymous is targeting them, however. Harm can come from people you already have in your life. If you are in a situation where someone in your life is monitoring you closely, any information they can see online about you is another bit of your privacy lost.

You are Discoverable#

Good Habits#

The first rule about existing in society is this: you cannot do anything without potentially leaving some trace that you were there. The same is true of any online behavior. The goal of this guide is not to prevent these traces, nor to make you afraid of being online. Many things are already public or readily available using People Search Services, including names, aliases, addresses, family members, and phone numbers. The goal is not to wipe your online presence entirely (if you want to do that, this guide is not the right place to look), but rather to reduce your exposure to risk going forward. If already-public information poses an immediate threat to your safety, you must contact law enforcement or a domestic shelter to make a safety plan.

That said, there are some best practices you can follow to make yourself less traceable across the internet. Security is a habit.

Use a separate email or account for important categories in your life (work, personal, junk mail). This makes your online activities vastly easier to organize and harder to profile. If you share an email account with someone who you don’t want to access certain files, having a separate account you can use is a good idea.
Avoid using your real name on social media (or any website) unless you are specifically okay with associating that site with your identity.
Audit permissions every time you download an app or sign up for a service. This does not mean you need to go crazy and read the privacy policy, but rather to be knowledgeable about what information you are giving out to that service, especially location. Always look at the settings for any new account you make and disable any features you don’t want.
Consider using an adblocker. There are many excellent free ones, and they block a lot of cross-site trackers, which are mostly used for personalized advertisements.
Try not to use the same account name or alias across sites.
When you don’t need an account anymore, delete or deactivate it!
Do not friend people on social media that you do not personally know.
Do not join public Wi-Fi networks. They are an insecure way to connect to the internet, and expose your internet traffic for anyone to be able to see. If you must use one, do NOT type any passwords, financial information, or other sensitive info into ANY website you visit.
Consider a more privacy-oriented browser, if yours does not allow you to limit what information you can share.

This list may seem daunting, but it gets easier to work with technology the more you understand it. It takes time to build these habits. Focus on one or two at a time!

Useful Frames of Mind#

Security is also a mode of thought. The less you permit yourself to compromise on what you share, the more you value your safety and privacy in general. Remember:

The default amount of information you should share is ideally none.
Any information you share to sign up for a service—whether it be a name, phone, email—can eventually become public.
Anything on social media can be weaponized if someone is motivated enough. If you have this kind of person in your life, consider limiting their access to your account or deleting it.
On that note, any information about you can potentially be a source of vulnerability. Think about how pieces of information can be used against you and decide if the risk you take on by sharing it is worth it.