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Updated October 9, 2023Being the key business ambassador, you want to be visible. You want to shout to the rooftops about all the amazing things you are doing and accomplishing, in hopes it gets picked up, goes viral, and causes business to boom.
But every public profile, tweet, post, blog, and even list of connections and people you know can be used against you too. While this book is focused on security, privacy and security often go hand in hand and we would be silly to not mention it.
The passive and active information we share on social media can be used by others to start to put together the pieces of an attack. While you are unlikely at this point to have an attacker that seeks you out, there are still some easy and automated attacks that you could fall for.
danger If your social accounts have relaxed privacy settings, and you tend to be loud about your customers and partners you work with, an attacker can scrape that data and use it as an easy impersonation point. It is common for attackers to scan through and create fake profiles on social media accounts, mirroring the real one, and attempting to message you with strange requests. By keeping lists like these private, we prevent ourselves from falling for some of the low-effort type attacks like these.
Finding the right balance will always depend on the public brand you are trying to promote. For me, it means having all my personal social profiles locked down as far as they can go. For business social profiles, I lock down my connections and historical information unless we are contacts. I am also pretty mean and reject most connection requests unless I have met someone in person and it is the right platform to be connecting with them on. Everyone else can always find me on my business blog and business email. This balance will look different for everyone, and you shouldn’t feel like you are missing out on important brand opportunities by protecting your information. The right people will go through the right channels to reach out; anyone else should be judged with some healthy skepticism.
One of the more helpful features of password managers is the ability to share passwords with teams. It is an inevitable part of running a business with digital accounts. Some accounts only allow you to have one user, such as Twitter, and you might need a hand in managing the account. Or you might need to share accounts to manage account costs.
For example, if there is an online account you use for creating digital content like banners and images for sharing on social media, you might get help from a few people on the team to get these made, and they never have to use the account at the same time. However, the cost to have an account per user could be way out of the budget if you run a small team and business. Just because your business chooses to share a single account doesn’t mean the security of that account has to go outside the door. Setting a unique password in a password manager, and sharing it within your password manager with others on the team, is a great way to keep the account safe.