Sunday, December 4, 2016

Add a little more hay to the haystack: fine tune your social media profile and connections

With the sweeping UK surveillance law nicknamed "Snooper's Charter" entering in force on 29 November 2016, the blogster figured this would be a good time to talk about your social media presence.

Privacy and security on the internet are big, complicated issues. This post is not about the latest and greatest in VPN tools, encryption and the like. If you use restricted groups or invitation only accounts, your real or perceived needs are already quite different from the rest of us, and this reminder is not for you.

This post is about a couple of very simple basic things that require very little effort and are about one thing only.

About making you just a little less interesting to some of the many companies and entities that collect data on you.

Make yourself a little more bland.

Or think of it as dressing for work, or as putting on make-up.
  
What to do:
Add "fluff" to your profile and connections. Become "friends" with celebrities you don't particularly like.
If you are a political conservative, add some lefties to the list of people you follow on Twitter.
If you identify with some sort of leftish world view, add some conservatives. 
As an atheist, add some religious accounts.
Find some comedy, add.
Find some science, add.
Baking, cycling, sports you never watch or perform, go for them.
You are in China? Follow that great communist party - it makes them feel important and secure.
In Turkey? Pick lots of government news outlets.

Then go and mute folks or hide them or their posts.

At the end of the day, obviously, what you post, re-post, tweet or blog is much more likely to get you into trouble than a list of "friends" or "follows".

There may even be an added bonus for the more curious users: you might get out of that dreaded filter bubble and discover something new.

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