A social networking is a way to stay in touch with your family, friends, colleagues and make new friends. Social networks are fun to use, helpful for job hunting and great for keeping in touch with friends, business contacts and relatives and share anything anywhere. Although women may use general social networking sites to connect to their friends, family, colleagues etc and share their experience, knowledge and advice. They can use social networking sites to support one another through motherhood, meet their career goals, inspire each other or find others who share an interest.
Women may be a parent, professional or general user and with the help of social networking sites they can connect with the world and may get much useful information. They can share their ideas and view other ideas which may help others and also a good thought can reach many people through a big network. Women can be an entrepreneur; they may get more profit by spreading their business through social networking. There are many social networking sites women can use like facebook, whatsapp, twitter etc.
Privacy Issues:
You may be in risk if you ignore some privacy issues like-
- Sharing your photos and activities publically.
- Sharing your location on your post give chance to the scammers to track your location.
- Adding friends whom you don’t know without any proper identification become risk for you while using social networking sites.
Risks and Challenges
Fake friends:
If you add an anonymous person whom you don’t know personally they can
- Steal the photos or spy your activities.
- They can make fake profile on the name and harm your identity for their personal benefit.
- They can mentally or emotionally blackmail you or defame you.
Identity theft:
While using social network you may face identity theft problem if you make unknown friends on social networking sites. Scammer may
- Steal your sensitive and personal information.
- Use your identity for gaining money, impersonating them by your identity etc.
Abusive, vulgar, or irreverent language:
Abusive, vulgar or irreverent languages are the major problem that women are facing today, many fake friends may talk about vulgar topics with you and they may
- Mentally or emotionally harass you.
- Use abusive words on your post or photo and defame you.
Sharing too much information:
- Sharing your more information like your home/office address, family relationship, phone no. etc may be risk for you, scammer may follow you or stalk you.
Spam E-mails:
Spam e-mail is usually unwanted e-mail advertising about a product sent to list of e-mails or group of e-mail addresses to gather the personal information of the unsuspecting users. They may send spam e-mail
- About some online shopping products, health insurance and you may be in a danger risk.
- For some fake job interviews
- For some special offers on home appliances.
And if you click on the malicious links given in the spam e-mails the scammer may gather your sensitive information.
Fake advertisement:
Social networking sites are majorly targeted by the scammer for the fake advertisement of the product , they may target you and steal your credential by doing following things
- By representing the fake advertisement as original one followed by malicious link, if you click on the link your sensitive information may be in risk.
- By fake app and services through it also they can steal your personal and sensitive information if you install those apps.
What women should do while using social networking sites:
- Always check the authenticity of the person before you accept a request on social networking sites.
- Keep some privacy setting like share your photos and activities only with your families and known friends.
- While choosing a Social Networking site, privacy issues should be considered, think before you post, chat, upload or download..
- Take your father/husband/brother’s or any family members permission if you want to meet the person whom you met in the networking site, so they can give you some suggestions and always know with whom you are meeting.
- If you think that your social networking account details have been compromised or stolen, report your suspicions to the networking site support team immediately.
- Never respond to harassing or rude comments which are posted on your profile.
What women should avoid while using social networking sites:
- Don’t give or post any personal information like your name, address of the company / home, phone numbers, age, sex, credit card details.
- Don’t give out your password to anyone..
- Do not post your friends information in networking sites, which may possibly put them at risk.
- Don't use a webcam with people you do not know.
- Avoid posting the plans and activities which you are going to do in networking sites.
- Don’t click the links which you are getting through social networking sites. If you want to visit the site then directly go through the original websites.
How you can control your privacy settings on social networking sites?
In social networking sites, by default setting every things will public, by there are many privacy settings they are giving for your security, so you must use all these facility to protect yourself from many problems online.
- You can restrict your post/videos/activity from strangers and can be share to your members in your contact by using ONLY ME option on privacy settings
- You can disable the friend request option, so no one can send request you.
- You can restrict the comment section from public, so members on your contact can only comment on your activity.
- You can restrict your personal /professional information from strangers.
- You can turn off the online mode so no one can know how long you are online.
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