Your digital reputation is everything that shows up when someone searches for you online. From your social media posts to images posted in your profile, your impression on social networks can make or break your web-based reputation.
According to a detailed infographic:
- 63 percent of recruiters check social media profiles to find more about potential candidates
- 8 percent of companies have fired someone for misusing social media
- 48 percent HR professionals and recruiters refer to personal sites and profiles before deciding whether you should be hired
So, how do you decrease the chance of falling victim to those who seek to use your personal data against you and make sure your social media presence reflects well on your individual identity or business? Here are some tips to help you out:
Think before you post
This adage has been played out by privacy advocates and media several times. An individual with a decent number of social connections posts something that others find offensive – it snowballs and forces the individual to take it out, but by then plenty of people have shared and taken screenshots of it.
If you won’t say it to your boss, in a public gathering or to your grandpa, don’t say it on social media. Want to vent about how your day went by? Better to call a friend or relative rather than getting into the social media abyss for everyone to see. The general rule of thumb – the more offensive or embarrassing your post, image, or video update it, the more likely it will catch attention and spread.
Take a look at your privacy settings
Review your current privacy settings as they play a major role in protecting your reputation online. Keeping a check here is just as important as keeping your debit/credit card in a safe place.
If you want to automate the privacy settings part, you have the option of using an antivirus program for Mac or Windows, depending on your computer OS. There are antivirus solutions that scan the privacy settings on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter to ensure there aren’t any vulnerabilities pertaining to this area. By protecting your privacy, such solutions ensure your current reputation stays intact.
Be selective of your connections
There’s a saying ‘you are who you hang out with’ – that’s applicable to social media connections. Anyone who is your social connection has the liberty to communicate with you publicly. This means they may be able to see your pictures if you haven’t configured your privacy settings or write/post anything about you on your profile wall as well as tag your profile on their own wall.
So when you’re accepting requests on social media, you’re giving every accepted connection the ability to impact your digital reputation. Avoid that from happening by being mindful of who you allow in your social circle; just because someone is following you doesn’t mean you own it to them to be in their social circle. And you don’t necessarily have to reciprocate the gesture to everyone.
Review your social profiles
Honestly look at your social accounts and things you’ve done in the past. Think about how all the current information could be used against you. Don’t exclude personal comments or documents you’ve uploaded including those grades/GPA. Then plan a damage control strategy; this is what large companies do on their social accounts.
You can type your name+social network name in Google to see what information pertaining to your social accounts has been indexed in search. If any material related to your profiles is hosted on third-party sites you can request the domain owner to take it down after proving it belongs to you.
Why You Need Antivirus
In addition to social media etiquette, you might be a really careful browser: you never download or open suspicious files, you never visit shady websites, and you never click on links in emails. You might also believe that the built-in security on your Mac or PC is enough to handle any threat. The truth is that no matter how careful you are, there is always a risk and you could become infected even from visiting a site that you trust and have visited before. Additionally, there are people who make it their life’s work to find new and exciting ways to mess up people’s computers.
Types of Viruses
There are several different types of computer viruses and they all have different functions.
- Resident viruses live on your computer in RAM memory and they can corrupt the programs and files on your machine, rendering them unusable.
- Overwrite viruses infect individual files and delete or overwrite the information in the file, making it unusable.
- Direct action viruses are designed to perform specific functions. When one of these viruses is introduced to your computer, it replicates itself then starts performing the task it was designed to do. This is the type of virus you usually see deployed in movies and TV shows, when they have to infect a computer to achieve a specific goal, like downloading files or stopping a nuclear apocalypse.
- File infectors infect a program while it is running; these types of viruses could damage the program or cause the program to damage the computer.
- Boot viruses infect the files that make it possible for the computer to boot up to the operating system. These viruses effectively turn your computer into an expensive paper weight.
- Directory viruses change the directory location of important program files, and replace those files with copies of the virus. When you try to run the program, it runs the virus instead because; and you can’t find the original files because they have been moved.
These are only a few of the types of viruses that can infect your machine. There are dozens, and even hundreds, more that have not be categorized because hackers are constantly refining their craft and coming up with new viruses.
All of these viruses can inhibit your computer’s function, and even prevent it from functioning at all. Once you are infected with one of these, you might be able to run a virus cleaner program, but often the only solution is to wipe the computer clean, reinstall the operating system.
At any rate, even if you can clean the virus off the computer, there’s a strong chance that you will lose some of your data, or infected software, both of which could be time consuming and sometimes impossible to replace.
Other Issues
Viruses aren’t the only concern, there are also security and privacy threats that you have to contend with, which is why internet security is so important.
There are sites malicious sites that can tap into your information the minute you visit them, compromising your privacy and security. Additionally, social networking sites sometimes have default security settings that can allow hackers and other untrustworthy individuals access to your personal information.
Internet security software scans websites to make sure they are safe, and if they aren’t will often block your access to the site by redirecting you to a warning page before the site can attack. This software can also scan your profiles on social media sites to make sure that they are not vulnerable to attack.
Also we recommend this graphic that features tips on how to become a more effective Twitter user, increase your following and grow awareness of your business or brand.
As you can see, simply being careful is not enough. In addition to smart social media and browsing practices, you also need reliable internet security to ensure your online safety. You also need to make sure that your security software is up-to-date. Most software should automatically update its virus definitions to keep up with the new threats, but you also need to make sure that your yearly subscription is up-to-date. If you let your subscription lapse, the software will no longer get new definitions and you will be as vulnerable as if you had no protection at all.