12 Things You Should Really Delete from your Facebook Right Now
If it wasn’t obvious already, with the microphones present on your smartphones, the little microphone in your headphones that you insert into your phone even though the phone microphone might have tape on it, the potential for total surveillance is being set up around us, whether you think it’s on purpose or not.
Having a social media account can expand the possibilities so many people have when it comes to work and other things, but there are some things people should remember.
If you understand the possibility of all this data social media collects for example, coming back to haunt people decades later, here are 12 things you would be well advised to go ahead and remove from your Facebook right now.
(Image credit: time)
1. Delete the friends you don’t know
Do you ever accept friend requests from people you’ve never even talked to? At some point in time when people go through the experience of using social media, people delete their account and create a new one because they initially made the mistake of filling their friends list with people they don’t even know.
It definitely helps to have a business Facebook, where the people who may end up being your customers for some service you provide online or maybe something you sell can fill up your friends list, but it may be best to have two accounts for that, a business account and a personal one.
2. Photos of your kids
First of all, your photos really shouldn’t be public, there is no limit to who could be looking at them, unless you’re trying to be some kind of public figure.
When it comes to your children, it should be common sense that those photos shouldn’t be public. People must not be aware of the kind of predators that live in this world. However, if people stay protected and able to defend themselves with force, it doesn’t really matter does it?
3. Your birthday
Your birthday is something that can be used against you hypothetically: some identity theft type situation might occur, or someone could look up your astrology chart, sarcasm.
(Image credit: in5d)
4. Where your child goes to school
This is a real common sense thing that all kinds of people unknowingly violate: they include some kind of thing that indicates where their child goes to school, like a hat that has the name of the school or something along those lines.
If you have pictures of your children, and also information about where they go to school, you’ve just given way too much information out if there’s a pedophile in the vicinity of your profile.
5. Your phone number
(Image credit: youtube)
It’s really, really possible to steal information through a phone number. That’s the absolute truth, your phone number is usually connected to your address, your full name, and all kinds of other info because you gave that to your phone service provider to create an account, right?
Ever been asked if someone could use your phone on the street? They might have been trying to steal your information. One article perfectly described a problem that is tied to information being too freely handed out, in which 36,429 sexual offenses against children were recorded in the UK in 2013 and 2014. That is such an incredibly high number.
The article says, with no disrespect to the plenty of people who do believe in self defense in the UK: “Perhaps that is because docility is on the rise, and in countries that aren’t America, if you stab a pedophile your peers might create a shrine dedicated to the dead pedophile rather than defending your kids… like the burglar in the UK who got stabbed, and people created a shrine in memorial to the man who was trying to rob an elderly man and his disabled wife.”
6. Location services
You never want to disclose your location on Facebook, and you assuredly do not want to disclose your location publicly.
The possibilities of what could happen if you do are many. It all depends on who you are, who you know, and where you live, what could happen as a result of this.
7. Your boss or people you work with
You really want to add the people you work with to your Facebook? Tell everyone you don’t have a social media account, thank me later.
8. Your vacation spots
Going on a vacation? Congratulations, you’ve just informed people that your house is ripe for robbery!
It’s like putting a “no guns allowed” sign on your house, it’s inviting people in for a kick-doe.
9. Your status with a relationship
(Image credit: povestidemama)
If you put your relationship status on Facebook, people targeting you could add your partner and lead them to believe who knows what. This is a real thing that happens, especially if someone becomes a target. Piss off a psychopath, or someone with sociopathic tendencies? Best to keep your info private.
10. Your credit or debit card info
Want to accept money through Facebook? You better remove that info when you’re done if you really want to do that. Why would something be offered that seems so convenient if there weren’t some risk?
11. Your plane or train ticket
Have a plane boarding pass, or a train ticket, or a bus pass? You probably shouldn’t post it to Facebook, you’ll let who knows who know exactly where you’re going to be, at a Greyhound station somewhere or an airport.
12. Your real name
Why would you put your real name on Facebook? They used to require that people photograph their government identification and let it match their name on Facebook, it might not still be like that but either way, why would anybody do this? It might be good to at least switch it up and make it a nickname or something.
