Social media influencers build their entire lives online. Not only their income but also their reputation relies entirely on social media networks. Hence, protecting accounts on those networks is vital for all influencers so that they can maintain their reputation and continue to build relationships with audiences and brands that they wish to work with.

All it takes for a hacker to ruin your influencer career is one misguided post on social media that can compromise your reputation. The world is full of examples of cybercriminals that have hacked into accounts of influencers and caused serious damage. 

If you are an influencer or aspiring to be one, this blog is for you! Here, we will look at the best ways on how to protect your privacy on social media and share solutions to social media privacy issues to help you make your accounts more secure. 

An Influencer’s Guide: How to Protect Your Privacy on Social Media in 6 Ways

1. Be Careful about Who Can Access Your Accounts

Famous social media influencers, especially those with a large number of followers, do not work alone. They have an entire team that helps them cultivate their brand and create and post content regularly. 

In some cases, a team only helps generate content and strategies, but the access to the account is only with the influencer. However, many influencers work with a team that can log in and post the content on the influencer’s behalf. That means sharing passwords and access with others that might not be too vigilant about cybersecurity. 

If more people have access, this also means more potential weak points. Not everyone on your team will be as careful as you about protecting a password. That makes the whole account vulnerable because of the actions of one person.

Hence, you must limit the number of people who can access your accounts. It would help if you also looked into adopting a policy related to cybersecurity for everyone who has access. An approach like this can set the expectations for what rules your team needs to follow when posting content. 

2. Remove Personal Information

Yes, being a successful social media influencer does mean sharing your life with your digital audience. Still, it doesn’t mean that you should put your personal data and private information up for display. The world is filled with hackers and stalkers who can use this data to track influencers and swat, stalk, dox, or harass them. 

One of the best social media safety tips, OneRep can give is to please keep your personal information away from the internet. If you are uploading an image or video of a document or a receipt, please blur or cross out your private details such as sensitive contact information, personal records, family details, etc. Only your public-facing personality should be accessible to your followers. It would be best if you hid everything else for your own safety. 

3. Secure Your Accounts

An important step in applying solutions to social media privacy issues is to protect your accounts with complex passwords. Having strong passwords is super important. Let’s suppose you choose the name of a faraway city that you once visited or have dreamed of visiting as your password. Later, while sharing vacation pictures with your fans, you let the name of this city slide without even realizing it. Regrettably, a small slip such as this is all a cybercriminal needs to dive into your accounts.

Instead of choosing such a word, you should use a random keyword generator. It is certainly wise for anyone in the spotlight. If you don’t want to use a keyword generator, the ideal way to go about this is to adopt a paraphrase utilizing a combination of words that only you know. We recommend that you use a phrase with 4 or more words. It should be at least 15 characters long.  

You should also enable multi-factor authentication to add an advanced layer of protection to your accounts. Suppose a cybercriminal attempts to hack into your account. In that case, they will not only have to guess your password, but they also need to provide a second authentication factor such as a fingerprint scan or phone number that matches yours. 

4. Stay Informed about Threats and Protection Measures 

The best defense against cybersecurity threats is information.  The tactics that hackers and cybercriminals use always keep on changing. As an influencer, you need to stay up-to-date about what the current threats are and how a cybercriminal can use them against you. 

Social media networks and privacy service providers are updating their services and features to stay ahead of threats from cybercriminals, so you must stay informed to protect yourself.  Educate yourself and your social media team (if you have one) so all of you can stay one step ahead of hackers and cybercriminals. 

5. Be Careful about What Your Share

It would be best if you did not share everything on social media. One simple slip by you or your team can allow a cybercriminal such as a hacker to dig into your life instantly. So, when you are creating content, you must be extra careful about what you are putting out there and what you are sharing with the world. 

Keep the following away from your social media:

• Current location
• Travel details
• Contact information
• Tax and income details
• Family details

6. Always Put Your Privacy First

Once you spend a few months being an influencer, sharing on social media can feel like second nature to you. However, you must make a commitment to personal privacy. This means that before you post every piece of content, ask yourself if this will violate your privacy in many ways. For instance, does a photo reveal your location, or the caption reveals your contacts, etc.? 

Oversharing on social media is a nasty way several influencers hinder their own privacy efforts, often without even noticing. Having a “privacy-first” mindset will allow you to be more cautious and less careless. 

Also Read: 5 Awesome Social Media Management Tools