Social Media Privacy using VPN

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People spend most of their time on the internet using social media. Hence, securing themselves and their information has turned into an expanding need. The need to protect your data, your identity, and ensuring your social media privacy is the need of the hour.

Virtual Private Networks, often referred to as VPN,  are convenient and easy-to-use tools, which hide your presence and shield your private information from falling into the wrong hands. VPNs are quickly turning into a fundamental part of the advanced online security tool stack.

Yet, can a VPN hide and protect your identity on social media on colossally famous websites like Facebook and Instagram?

Shockingly, a VPN can’t hide your presence on social media if you’re deliberately offering websites to collect your personal data. However, VPN will make an encrypted tunnel and will add an extra layer of security around your connection. However, the site still has access to the information you share.

Privacy vs Anonymity

Before we move further and delve deeper, we should be clear on what is privacy and what is anonymity. Most people confuse the two terms and consider both privacy and anonymity as the same thing. But it is not the case, VPNs ensure privacy as it will help you to protect some of your vital information. But if you want to be totally anonymous when online, you shouldn’t create your account on any social media website like Facebook and Instagram in the first place.

Let us take an example to make things clear. When you us a VPN while being online on social media, it gives you privacy by hiding your real IP address from the actual site and keeps your shared information encrypted from your ISP or to some other third-party apps. But the actual website, like Facebook, is still able to track your activities like what you’ve liked, what you follow, and more.

How does VPN ensure privacy on Social Media?

• Will help you mask your location : Most social media sites gather the IP locations of users. They also update these records and keep them associated regularly in their database. Regardless of whether you don’t explicitly change your location, a VPN will guarantee that your IP address and device location vary from your actual one.
  
  So whatever location the VPN assigns to you, that’s where you will appear to be. This mask can prove to be useful on social media sites like Reddit and Twitter that don’t require too much validation from the users.
  

• Will protect your information and data : VPN will not be able to keep you anonymous and keep your data protected which you deliberately have given to social media sites, but VPN will create an encrypted tunnel while you are online. This will ensure that your data which is in transit, will be securely passed without getting leaked to ISP or to some other person with ill intentions. So it is recommended that one should VPN while using social media to ensure the safer transition of data from user to website and website to the user without allowing anyone to hinder the process.

Steps to protect your privacy on social media

1. Always use a strong password to keep your data protected. Don’t reuse the same password for every social media. 
2. Never login to your social media if you’re logged out from your social media and at the same time you are connected to public Wi-Fi. 
3. Where possible, always use 2-factor-authorization. 
4. Never trust any suspicious link. Open forwarded links only if you trust the sender. 
5. Keep your information on social media as low as possible. Limit the amount of information you share to the social media account. You don’t have to share your birthday, address, or some other information always. Share it only if it is required.
6. And overall, always use a VPN (DigitalDart recommended) to have an ensured extra layer of privacy and security.  

How to ensure anonymity on Social media?

If you cannot stray away from social media sites but still want to ensure anonymity, you can create a throwaway profile. This will prevent you from cyberstalking as well as ensure your anonymity. A throwaway profile is when used to create a profile with false information.

Here is how you can create your throwaway profile on the social media site.

1. Set up a trusted and secure VPN (DigitalDart recommended)
2. Now connect your network to the VPN server, also note down the location of the VPN server to which you are connecting, and make sure you are always using the same location whenever you wish to use your throwaway profile. Using different locations will create suspicion and your profile may get deleted. 
3. Open your browser in incognito mode and open up the social media website. 
4. Now register yourself on the site using fake information.

Now your throwaway profile is ready and you can use social media with ensured anonymity. Also, follow the safety measures we discussed above which will ensure privacy on social media.

The best practice is to always use a VPN wherever you are online. There are many good VPNs out there but DigitalDart tops the list as it is one of the most secure VPN and also it is very easy to set up.