Facebook, Instagram and your privacy

Posted 17 April, 2012 - 12:06 by ParentsCornerZA

Mobiflock has written about Facebooks purchasing of Instagram, and what it means to you, the user, in terms of your privacy. They have given us all some tips on what parents, and any Instagram user, needs to consider if they want to stay safe online when using Instagram:

  • Everyone should be aware of the type of information they are sharing via a picture that seems innocent and fun at the time: does it contain the name of your child’s school, or the front of your house? Also consider what information can be pieced together from a selection of photos: the ability to identify your home address followed by your holiday snaps might not be such a good idea
  • A related point is to be careful of geo-tagging your Instagram pics. This adds a piece of location information to your photo, and between this and check-ins on sites such as Facebook, Foursquare and Gowalla, and location information on Twitter, I think we need to be careful about how much of our physical location and habits we are making public
  • All Instagram photos are public by default, but you can opt to have your pictures private, which means that you control who can see them as you’ll have to approve future followers, and your pics won’t appear in public timelines
  • Thanks to the Facebook purchase, Instagram’s terms and conditions are likely to change in line with those of Facebook. Watch out for these and understand what they mean (not always easy with Facebook, we know!)
  • Know that once it’s out there, it’s there for good. Teach your kids, and yourself to take a deep breath before posting anything and quickily consider if this is something you’d be happy to have associated with your name for the foreseeable future.
  • Know that nothing is for free. If you aren’t paying in cold, hard cash, you are paying some other way: with your time, your attention or your data. Just like you would weigh up whether something was worth its dollar price tag, consider whether a “free” service is worth its “free” price tag.

You can read the full article here.