Dicas para proteger sua reputação pessoal e profissional
10 Social Media Tips to Protect Your Personal and Professional Reputation
At this point, I’ve virtually assured that none of you will invite me to your next birthday party! So here’s my early birthday present to you: 10 ways to leverage IT security best practices to protect your personal and professional reputation on social media.
1. Use Different Account Names for Personal and Professional Social Media Accounts
Your professional reputation is of utmost importance, and it’s available globally on a 24/7 basis to anyone who wants to see it. Be very careful not to use the same social media handles for your personal and professional accounts. Instead, maintain a professional distance between the two.
2. Use Different Profile Photos Across Social Media Accounts
Remember that images can easily be found using search engines, making it easy for potential troublemakers to dig up all your accounts in one fell swoop. Utilize unique profile photos to differentiate between your personal and professional accounts and change them on a regular basis. This is especially important if you have a unique name, since you’re easier to track down in search engines to begin with.
3. Differentiate Between Personal and Professional Contacts
Looking back, I should never have accepted the Facebook friend’s LinkedIn contact request. Only a small percentage of your contacts should be considered both professional colleagues and personal friends. Otherwise, you risk having your professional reputation damaged by a potentially unstable personal acquaintance. Similarly, allowing your professional contacts to view your over-the-top bachelor or bachelorette party photos might not be in your best interest.
4. Limit Visibility of Personal Accounts in Search Engines
Recently, I’ve noticed that certain social media sites permit you to decide whether you want your account details to made available in major search engines. Since social media sites are so good at generating potential contacts for you nowadays, you probably won’t miss out much by suppressing your personal information on search engines.
5. Limit the Amount of Personal Information You Provide
Social media providers encourage you to include as much information as possible to present you with compelling content and targeted advertising efforts. However, you should be judicious about doing so. My stalker capitalized on my interest in American playwrights like Tennessee Williams to break down social barriers to information sharing and encourage me to share even more detailed information about myself.
6. Use Social Media Privacy Settings
This was a tough lesson for me at the time. I must confess that prior to the incident, my Facebook account probably operated with the default settings that were recommended by the social media provider. This permitted my stalker to methodically comb my Facebook friends list for a weak link who would reveal privileged information to him. He was also able to see photos of my family members so he could reach out to them, knowing that they would be more concerned if I’d experienced a supposed emergency.
After reading this, invest 10 minutes to adjust the privacy settings for your favorite social media account. I promise it’ll be time well-spent.
7. Use Different Passwords Across Social Media Accounts
Admittedly, I also made this mistake and reused passwords across accounts. I shudder to think what might have happened if the stalker had been able to compromise my password and hijack multiple social media accounts with fraudulent content updates.
8. Perform Routine Contact Cleanings
I’ve been a social media proponent for more than a decade. But it’s important to remember that everyone you’re connected to is privy to everything you make available about yourself. If one of your contacts becomes unstable or his/her own account is compromised, this data could be a gold mine for a malicious actor.
9. Report IT Security Incidents to Law Enforcement
Cyberstalking was such a new phenomenon at the time of my incident that local law enforcement simply took my report and advised me to block the contact on all my personal and professional accounts. This seemed like a light touch considering the fact that cyberstalking is a felony in the state in which I live. Furthermore, I had written proof of multiple death threats. However, the only way to force law enforcement to take these incidents seriously is to ensure that they’re properly documented and tracked.
10. Educate Contacts on Best Practices
I’m personally supporting #StompOutBullying Day on Oct. 3, and there are many additional resources available on the internet to help you learn more about protecting yourself.
Cyberstalking is the most severe form of bullying. So please share these tips with your children, friends and less experienced professional contacts who might be unaware of the potential dark side of public information sharing.
Conclusion
Despite my experience, it is my belief that 99 percent of people in the world have good intentions, but society pays more attention to the negative 1 percent. However, as the line dividing the professional and the personal increasingly blurs, you need to be more vigilant than ever.