Protecting your privacy on social media: 18 top tips

The most important factor in protecting yourself on the internet/social media is being selective about what you share publicly. Every post, comment, and photo you put online increases your digital footprint. Tagged locations in your posts can be used to understand your whereabouts, an image of an ID card number you share could be used to impersonate you at your organization, and a trophy from your college could lead to your personal details sitting on the internet via Google dorking.

The more you put out, the bigger of a target you become, whether it is for social engineering attacks, phishing attempts, or identity theft. Maybe you posted something mentioning a friend’s nickname that is part of their password, which on the worst day leads to the attacker being able to crack your password. This is highly unlikely but can have serious consequences when it happens.

Hence, staying aware and avoiding unnecessary disclosure beyond what is required is important in today’s world. Review your social media settings regularly to maintain control, make accounts private, disable location tagging, and avoid sharing sensitive information. Remember that nothing on the internet is truly private; once you post it, it may exist in some form or another. So, before putting anything out the next time, think if you would be fine with that information becoming public.

I protect my privacy on my personal social media by deliberately stripping all EXIF metadata from photos before I upload them. Every digital image has data hidden in it about the exact GPS location of where you took the image and about the device it was taken on. This information is used by social media platforms to build a rich profile of your physical movements and personal habits, even if you never manually tagged a location.

The best part about doing this is that it is very easy to prevent this surveillance. On a desktop computer, just right-click on the image file, select properties, then select the option to remove all personal information. On a phone, if you are like me, you will want to have a very simple third-party app that strips this information before you share any picture. This quick 15-second check before sharing an image ensures that I am sharing just an image, and not an invisible map of my life.

My number one tip for protecting your privacy on personal social media? Assume anything you post could be seen beyond your intended audience, even with privacy settings on. This mindset alone will save you from oversharing.

On a practical level, regularly audit your profile settings. Check who can see your posts, stories, friend list, and contact details. Most people set it once and forget, but platforms change defaults often.

I also recommend separating personal and professional spaces. Keep your public-facing accounts intentional and curated, while tightening privacy on accounts meant for family and friends. It’s not about hiding, it’s about controlling context. The less guesswork you leave to algorithms or strangers, the more control you keep over your digital footprint.

The most underused privacy tool is disabling location metadata in your phone’s camera settings before posting any photos to social media. When you snap a shot with location services enabled, the EXIF data of the image will include GPS coordinates that can be used to determine your home address, office address, or any other common location where you might go for everyday purposes.

I suggest going to your phone’s settings, then camera app permissions, and disallowing location access completely. This prevents GPS coordinates from being embedded in every photo you take and means that even if someone downloads your images from social media, they won’t be able to work out your physical location by searching the file’s metadata.

I protect the privacy of my personal social media by carefully controlling third-party app integrations. Whenever you sign into a game, quiz, or tool using Facebook, Google, or X, you are granting that app long-term access to your profile data. Often, when users sign in using one of these services, they forget these connections are active for many years and continue to collect information quietly in the background. This is the reason why I set a schedule for monthly audits where I review all the connected apps and permissions. During that check, I review each app connected to my profile, remove apps I no longer need, and limit access to apps that I still use.

When I first started doing this, I netted over 40 inactive connections that had access to data I had not shared in years. My experience running hosting services and managing user accounts taught me that dormant integrations are one of the biggest threats, if not the absolute biggest, so cutting the dead wood is one of the best defense strategies I have employed.

The single biggest tip for keeping your privacy within personal social media is to disable location services for all social media apps on a permanent basis. Most people think that if they go to the settings within the app and set their privacy, it will protect them, but the location is embedded within pictures and posts even if your location sharing is turned off.

This was learned after we discovered the competition was mapping our locations of offices, and client meeting patterns via metadata analysis. Over eight months, they extracted location coordinates from seemingly innocuous posts and constructed a complete picture of our business operations.

I now disable location services for LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter globally, and any photos get stripped of GPS data before posting. This simple move removed 90 percent of the measurable intelligence that our competitors could capture about our business activities.

Restrict visibility using audience segmentation.

Privacy breaches do not need hacking; they happen through careless oversharing. The rule is easy: don’t set visibility to public by default. All major social networks have audience segmentation, but very few people take advantage of that. On Facebook or Instagram, I maintain “close friends” or “inner circle” lists for personal stories. All professional contacts see are safe, neutral posts. On LinkedIn, it is connections versus followers visibility. It takes a few minutes to set it up, but it really helps. You’d be surprised how much privacy is gained once you stop sharing everything.

Do not use auto-tagging, and avoid facial recognition traps.

Turn off automatic photo tagging and face recognition suggestions. They kill privacy silently. They associate your name and face with other people’s content without your consent and teach systems what your facial recognition patterns are with different people, and where and when. It is not a matter of being paranoid; it is a matter of practicing digital hygiene. I set all tags to manual approval before they can be added to my timeline. It is tedious, but my social network is organized the way I want, not the way the social networking site wants. You gradually snap out of the impulse of posting and begin to realize what you are doing. That intention is the strongest form of privacy.

Keeping your privacy protected on social media starts with controlling access. Adjust your settings so your posts and profile information are only visible to those you actually trust. That part is easy. The more difficult but also more important part is practicing discretion with what to share in the first place. Privacy isn’t a feature, it is a practice.

In my view, the best habit is to treat all posts, stories, etc. as if they could eventually go public, even if the permissions are secure. A post never really disappears from the internet even if you think you delete it. Once it is public, you have no control of it, even if it feels secure. Using privacy settings along with selective sharing will keep your digital self relevant without having to sacrifice connection.

One of the least known but most effective privacy steps is turning off facial recognition settings on your social platforms. Most people do not realize that platforms automatically scan photos and videos to identify you, even when someone else uploads them. That means your presence can be tracked and connected without you ever posting a thing.

Disabling this feature does not stop friends from tagging you, but it does prevent the platform from building a hidden library of your face. It limits how easily your profile can be linked to content you never consented to share. This is something people rarely think about, yet it gives you back control over how and where your image appears online.

It is a small change in settings, but it cuts off one of the most overlooked ways your personal data gets collected and connected.

One major privacy setting to be aware of for social media apps is setting the right permissions for location sharing. Many social media apps such as Snapchat, Instagram, and others will actively share your location based on settings, and it is up to the user to enable, disable, or limit who is seeing this information. If you do want your location shared, I’d suggest limiting location sharing to just close friends and family to reduce the risk that this geo data is used against you in any number of ways. It’s easier to limit who can see this information than remaining mindful of who can access it combined with what you are posting on a continual basis.

It is important to protect your social media account and manage it smartly. First, you should check the privacy settings where the options are set by default. The best way is to go through these options thoroughly and restrict who can access your posts and pictures.

Use two-factor authentication and strong passwords to protect your social media account. This will help to stop hackers. You should not make sensitive information public, such as birthdays, addresses, vacation plans, real-time location updates, and more.

Review your list of friends and followers and remove the ones you do not recognize. You should not use automatic photo tagging and should not share your location with everybody. Otherwise, it will provide your information to everybody, which is not required. Public WiFis lack security, and therefore, you should learn how to use them with a VPN.

You should not accept friend requests from those you do not know, as it can open doors to security risks. You should keep your pictures and other personal information private, as it is the information hackers look for. You should also not share other people’s information without their consent. Never ignore privacy policy updates. You should follow these steps to keep your information safe.