Social Media Identity Protection – Aware of the new additions to the existing social media list?

by Prejushya Kalicharan - 11/15/2012 10572 Views

How safe are you across the social network?

social_media_identity

I wish to categorize this story as two parts: One for those who have already established their online presence over all popular social media sites and the other for those who are unaware of social media identity theft.

For those who have already registered their presence over most social media sites a while ago

There are social media sites getting added each day around every nook and corner of the world. We may not be concerned with them all since a very meager percentage among them Pinterest for example flourishes to the top level. Henceforth establishing your presence over these sites becomes an essential factor. Technology gets upgraded every second and so should we and our business requirements. Staying ignorant about these new platforms is equally problematic as being ignorant about “social media identity theft”. Approach an expert to update your presence across all the social media platforms.

For those who are new to the term ‘social media identity theft’

Every business no matter the size has its own competitors trying to pull their legs to reach the top position beating the other in the competitive market. A business’s social media presence is an unavoidable factor and along with it accompanies the risk factor – “Social Media Identity Theft”.

You happen to register your name in Facebook for the first time, and on filling the online application form, you end up finding that your name is already been registered and someone else makes use of your identity to ruin your business and reputation. That would be worst ever thing that can happen to your business and your brand. This is just an example. Facebook is one most popular social media outlet that more than 75% of the online businesses have an account in it. What about the other social media sites with comparatively lower reputation than that of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Google+? Will you have the opportunity to register in each of those sites, and even if you register will you have the time to update your posts in each of them? That is a million dollar question. But what I opine is that it’s always possible by means of a professional social media service provider.

This identity thieves aim at financial disruption of your business, bank account hacking, making use of your personal as well as official data, post negative reviews on your business OR EVEN WORST posting absurd policies implemented by you from your name. How would you feel when you search for your brand online and land at pages where your business is been screwed by postings done by someone else? How can you prevent these frauds from bouncing upon you and your business? Let’s see how.

The most important thing is to create your presence over social media sites using your real name and to avoid using pseudo-names. You may or may not update your site; it depends on your wish, though your presence should be stamped there to avoid others take-over your identity. Note to register your name without any periods or hyphens or numbers in between. For example, www.facebook.com/prejushyakalicharan OR www.twitter.com/prejushyakalicharan.

If you have a very common name like Jasmine Flower and someone else has already registered using the very same name, use your initials to differentiate your brand.

Post your professional style photo clearly showing your face, not showing half your face or your back/ side portion of your body.

Inform the administrators of a social media site, if you feel that your identity is misused by a stranger. Especially, photographs.

Opt for SEO optimization for your site to bring your website to the top when someone searches for your brand over search engines. If you don’t do that all negativisms about your brand will pop-up in the higher place. Negative reviews rank well than positive reviews, do you know that?

When you come across negative reviews through social media, respond to them and resolve the problem immediately to avoid further complications. And remember that Google penalizes bad reviews lying in your business page.

You could choose “One Click Marketing” with social media. A single registration processinto this online portal links to top social media sites, where one single post shareleverages the data to reflect on all other top social media sites. This saves lots of time and labor. The set-up part is really tedious, but once set-up this is worth investing in. Hereby you could protect your brand and simultaneously improve rankings.

Be a regular blogger. Daily posting will be optimal or else twice in a week or at least 5 posts per month.

Install the best Internet Security Software available in market. Cautiousness is essential when clicking over links that pop-up on your window.

Remember the security questions and answers you opted to answer while filling in the social media application form.

Bookmark your social media sites’ URL and avoid entering these sites via another website or email. There is an opportunity that you leave traces of your username and passwords over the third party sources.

Selective acceptance of friend requests is always the best practice.

Have a strong password, so than any intimate people of yours will not be able to guess-out your password.

Using social networks at your work place is not advisable, since your social page’s data gets traced in the company server.

Deleting a particular photo or video feed that you had fed to social media sites is never the end of it. The information lies there in the server for ever.

It’s always best that you Google & Bing your name or your brand name on a regular basis and verify the results that the search engines return.

Eugene Kaspersky says…

Eugene Kaspersky’s (CEO of Kaspersky Lab) answers to one of the questions reagrding the security issues surrounding social media:

Interviewer: Social networks are flooded with spam.Moreover, social networks have become a serious instrument for businesses, which also critically reduces amount of useful information there. Does this mean that today’s Social Networks are in many cases nothing but a bubble?

Eugene Kaspersky: It’s a universal problem for cyberspace, not only social networks: near 72 percent of all email traffic is SPAM, more than a quarter of all mobile applications are used just once. But I wouldn’t say that social networks are a bubble – this is a perfect place for communications that actually substitutes for traditional channels – like e-mails, phones and personal meetings. In some cases – even real life itself.

Take immediate initiative to protect your brand name from being misused by your competitors or spammers!

Category :

SEO News

Tags :

social media identity theft, SEO, social media, social network, branding, social media sites

About Prejushya Kalicharan

SEO is a challenging field and I try my best to surpass this challenging environment which is unconditionally filled with opportunities, knowledge building and problem solving. I pursue what I .... more info