Is Your Social Media Presence A Liability?
It's not uncommon for a celebrity or other high profile figure to post something incendiary on Twitter, only to claim, an hour later, that their account was hacked. But if we're being honest, how likely is it that they just regretted posting it, and wanted to pretend they had nothing to do with it?
Twitter and Facebook accounts do get hacked, but it's not a major concern for a number of reasons:
- There's really no accessing anything else through your social media
If someone cracks your email password, they have a treasure trove of sensitive information. If they break into your Twitter account, what can they really do? If you use the same password for everything, then they can figure out how to go from Twitter to Gmail and so on, but this assumes that they know the email you're using for business in the first place.
- It's easy to keep people out with regular password changes
If you're a major figure you may find people trying to break into your social media on a regular basis, but this generally means people with a public reputation that can be embarrassed. People are always trying to guess Donald Trump's password, for instance... and so far, they haven't pulled it off. In other words, there's really only a slim risk of this happening, and that's if you're rich and famous.
There is one area of risk to consider: You may wind up becoming your own liability through social media. It's not unusual for someone to post, for instance, their driver's license to show off how bad the picture is, only for someone to take all of the data featured on the ID and put it to work. If you're a constant Instagrammer you might wind up broadcasting from a meeting where you were supposed to have a confidentiality agreement, and putting sensitive information out there for the public.
You can't afford to be careless when using social media. You should be careful about any photo or post that features anything from credit cards and license plates to plane schedules and street addresses involving yourself, clients and colleagues. The right piece of information can become a skeleton key in a hacker's hands, so the less you have out there, the better. Here's a basic rule to keep you from getting into trouble with your social media pics: If the photo contains any numbers, and if it features anyone who's not posing for the camera, ask yourself if it might put someone in a compromising position.