Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms worldwide. With more than one billion monthly active users, this space is teeming with people who’d like to share a piece of their life, thoughts, or business. Knowing how big this landscape is, it’s not surprising to find malicious entities wandering about this digital space, especially now that Instagram is widely used in e-commerce and digital marketing.
Regardless of how and why you use Instagram, it’s best to continuously be updated on ways to protect yourself and your Instagram account to ward off potential hackers from your account. To keep you updated, here are six ways to stay safe and secure on Instagram:
1. Enable Two-Factor Authentication
One of the first things you may want to do to ensure you stay safe and secure on Instagram is to enable the app’s two-factor authentication. In doing so, you make it hard for malicious entities to break into your account. This form of web security ensures that the login request actually came from the account owner by creating an environment for the user to access the said account actively. Instagram’s two-factor authentication will either send a notification to the account owner or be asked to type in a unique code when an unrecognized device tries to log in.
2. Decide What You See On Instagram
The content pushed your way is based on your habits while inside the application. One of the things you can do if you feel like you’re overwhelmed with what you’re seeing on your feed is to unfollow people.
Unfollowing people can be quite therapeutic, especially if the content they’re putting out isn’t relatable for you anymore. If you decide to follow only a handful of people, doing it manually is the only way to do it. On the other hand, if you want to start again from scratch without deleting your account or starting another one at the least amount of time, you may want to unfollow everyone all at once. Manually going through your ‘Following’ list to unfollow individual accounts can be pretty tedious. Here’s an idea: try to unfollow everyone all at once so you can start cleaning.
How to unfollow everyone on Instagram all at once? Use reputable third-party applications that can do the job for you. Just do your due diligence to ensure the application you’ll use won’t steal your information.
3. Protect Your Account By Going Private
Another way for you to ensure your safety and security while using Instagram is to control who can see your posts by making your account private. By switching, you can also remove followers without the need to block them. You may also want to filter out certain accounts and tag them as ‘close friends’ so the next time you post content, you have the option to make your posts visible only to a select group of people.
4. Don’t Share Your Location All The Time
Posting content with your location is one of the best ways to document places you’ve been to and an essential factor for business bloggers and vloggers. However, it’s vital to remember to be cautious when tagging personal and private places you frequently go to in order to avoid giving away critical information about your privacy.
5. Control Who Can Comment On Your Posts
One of the fun things you can do on Instagram is to engage with different users by commenting on posts. Not all comments, though, are beneficial or enjoyable to read. If you find some comments offensive, you can always delete these or filter out who can comment on your posts. A beneficial security feature of Instagram allows you to limit who can interact with your account, who can send you messages, and who can see your content without notifying them.
Your Security And Safety In A Snap
Living in the digital era means adapting to how technology influences people’s interactions. Social media platforms like Instagram provide a space where people can get inspired, entertained, and motivated. And, like any kind of space, platforms like these can also harbor malicious entities who are out to exploit users who don’t take extra precautions in guarding their privacy.
To remain safe and secure on Instagram, one would need to have the initiative to fortify their digital barriers by using Instagram’s security features like its security checkup. Other means of protecting your safety and security include actively allowing only a select few people to glean their personal information and always being conscious of the details they share. You can protect yourself against hackers or identity thieves by intentionally making an effort.