Instagram is a popular social network. As such, it is home to a lot of spam and scams, in the form of messages and comments meant to lure you into a phishing scheme. You can minimize your exposure to harm by making your account private. That makes it so that people (or bots) can only […]

Adding a geotag to a social media update is a nice way to enrich the post, but it comes with some risk. Someone viewing your feed might assume – correctly – that you aren’t home and try to break in. Moreover, sharing your location can expose you to certain types of targeted advertising. Err on […]

A majority of Americans don’t know that Facebook owns Instagram. That can lead to risky decisions, such as leaving microphone access enabled in your Instagram settings, which in turn informs what goes into your Newsfeed. You might even see some targeted ads based on recent phrases you uttered in the vicinity of your phone.

Mobile apps often ask for many permissions, including access to your camera, contacts list and geolocation. Think twice before granting them, since some applications only want these abilities for data harvesting purposes. For example, it’s not usually necessary to give Facebook access to your location, or to let Instagram listen in on your microphone (unless […]