The social media realm has grown so immensely and today, the likes of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter record billions of users per day when combined.
Led by Facebook, it has become notorious for many of us to make posts of just about everything, be it meals, clothes, holidays, travelling, or even personal life experiences, among others. While this might be fun, it can sometimes leave you in trouble as it leaves you exposed to the world. So, do you quit Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter? Well, you can always do this, but why take such a drastic decision when there are workarounds in these apps that will keep your online presence private and secure?
Here’re some measures you can take to ensure that your social media accounts remain safe, especially when it comes to location matters.
Facebook and Twitter
Facebook and Twitter have a funny way of doing things. If you happen to share your location in one post, the next time you make a post these two will automatically use your location. However, the location being used will default to the current city as opposed to updating the exact venue. In short, they won’t show anything specific.
Both apps allow users to attach specific places to their posts with the check-in on Facebook while Twitter lets users add a Foursquare location in addition to a feature known as “Share precise location.” This makes it possible to search the public posts using their exact location.
Owned by Facebook, Instagram is a leader when it comes to sharing photos and short videos. The good thing is that this app does not tag your location on photos by default, instead, you have to give this permission. Still, it is possible you may find yourself accidentally sharing your location. Furthermore, the Instagram app has bene adding geotags to your photos even if you have disabled the location sharing option. This means you can easily share photos without realizing that they have your location too.
To take care of this, hit the tab with the location pin on your Instagram profile and check your photos’ location in the Photo Map. Zooming in will lead you to the location where the photos were taken, but tapping on the edit option found under the 3-doted menu on your top right, then again tapping on the geotagged photos followed by tapping “done” to save, will remove the location tag.
Apparently, this Photo Map feature will soon be removed from Instagram, but until then, this workaround should be handy enough to keep your location safe and private.
All in all, it is best to keep off the location tag if you want to keep your location on social media as private as possible.