💙 Safety tip for fedi users 💙
Hi friends! Hazel here with an important tip for online safety. We have lots of fun here on fedi, but this is still the internet. It's absolutely critical to safeguard your privacy, so no matter how safe it may seem: never share your personal information online!
There are lots of friendly, close-knit communities here, but that doesn't make it safe to post personal details. Bad-faith actors sometimes sneak into communities like ours, looking for vulnerable people to stalk and harass. Fedi, in particular, has a problem of hateful people operating "scrapers" that use bots to scan the federated timeline and capture any information on marginalized people. This gets passed on to dangerous groups like KiwiFarms and used for harassment, doxxing, and other terrible things.
Fortunately, you can protect yourself by limiting what types of personal information you share online. In particular, here are some things that you should never ever reveal:
- Your legal name(s)
- Your birth date
- Your address (even city of residence)
- Photos of your house (especially the exterior)
- Your phone number
- Where you work
There's also some which are a bit less critical, but I still strongly recommend against sharing. If you want to publish one of these, then please consider your risk factors!
- Selfies / other photos showing your face
- Your exact age (and be careful with ranges)
- Where you went to school / college
- Details of businesses / organizations you visit
- Uncommon medical conditions (doctors are frequently hacked)
This may seem restrictive, but I promise you - it's a small price to pay for online safety! There are horrible people out there, and they'd like nothing more than to make us suffer. Let's make sure that doesn't happen!
--
With love from Hazel,
Admin of transfem.social
​
​ ​
​
#OnlineSafety #PersonalSafety #DigitalSafety #Safety #Privacy #OpSec