The internet has done a lot for humanity, and it helped us progress and move forward as a species. Knowledge has never been as available as it is in this day and age –– you can literally get a hold of any piece of information you want with a click of a button. This affected society and our collective awareness, but this technological advancement were not without its downsides. If there’s one thing people d4read when it comes to the internet, it is privacy and security breaches. While you can access anything online, anyone could access your own personal information if you’re not careful.
We all use half a dozen different apps on a daily basis, between Google, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, and several others. And if you don’t approach them with caution, your most private information could be jeopardized. Fortunately, there are some cool security features on all those apps.
While Facebook has been in hot water for the past couple of years for claims of influencing voters and publishing false information, it remains the most heavily used social platforms in the entire world. And it still provides quite a few security features that should reassure the biggest naysayers out there. For example, if your personal account falls prey to malicious malware, Facebook will temporarily suspend it and scan, as well as clean, the account. Another very cool feature is how you’re allowed to include five friends to help you login to your account should you forget the password and don’t have access to an email –– who hasn’t been there at some point or another. You will set up the list of five friends, and if that situation happens, you can reach out to any of them to send you a code that will help you log into your account.
Instagram has also had its fair share of controversy after introducing the option to notify users if someone took a screenshot of their story, which didn’t last long and was removed last year. The question still remained, will instagram notify when you screenshot a message or a story right now? For stories, there is no notification, so you can take all the screenshots you want! But when it comes to direct messages, the situation is a bit different. If we’re talking content that won’t disappear like a text or hashtag, then taking a screenshot will not notify the creator. But if you took a screenshot of a content that vanishes like photo or video taken with the app’s camera, the creator will be notified, which is actually important for private content that should not leave the chat.
Over the years, Twitter has grown to be one of the most popular social media platforms across the world, and as that happened, the creators also worked on improving the security and privacy features for the millions of users. They started adding a two-factor authentication a few years back to add a very important extra layer of security next to your regular account password. This naturally made hacking attempts more complicated and boosted the app’s safety rankings. Another very cool feature Twitter uses is investigating suspicious login attempts. If a person tried logging into a certain account, factors like the location, device used, and previous login history would be taken into consideration. They basically try to figure out if it was you who’s signing in or a hacker.
WhatsApp offers a very important feature of encrypting all chats by default, which ensures that anything you say in a private conversation between you and someone else stays private. Still, you should regularly check manually if the encryption is still in place, especially if you’re sharing something important like credit card information. You should also enable two-step verification on WhatsApp –– or any app you’re using really –– because it makes it much more secure to access the application, not to mention more difficult for hackers to invade your privacy. One more thing you need to do on this app is disable cloud backups, which is an option you could access. WhatsApp automatically backs your chats up on Google Drive or iCloud, and you should cancel that feature because those backups aren’t encrypted, which means they are easily hacked.
You will find that most everyday apps you use have a ton of cool security features, but unfortunately, they are not as publicized as they should be. Constantly using the cyberspace and the different apps is quite risky if you don’t know how to protect your privacy and keep your important data safe. So, do yourself a favor and read up on what security features each app you regularly use offers.
Original post: Neat Security Features From Everyday Apps
* This article was originally published here