payitforward
5-Year Member
- Joined
- Sep 18, 2013
- Messages
- 486
Will the retailers use anything posted on social media as a means of breaking you down?
Yes, because once you've tagged something #usna18, they've got you, and can track back to stuff you posted forever ago, and follow whatever you post tomorrow -- with all of that "following" happening without actually "following" you. Once they've figured out your social media identity, they can add your id to a unique column through a third-party twitter host like tweetdeck.
^ The above posts by me are meant to serve as a public service announcement about how easy it is to track people on social media. It's not like you can get away with ONE lousy hashtagged post.
A member of my DS's cadre has a private Instagram account (that's good -- private accounts are better) and his ID is not his real name (that's also good). Normally, a parent of one of his underclassmen would never be able to find him. However, his GF posted ONE picture of the two of them using a hashtag students at the school sometimes use. I saw the picture because I check out that hashtag for interesting stuff going on. This guy has been a bit of a pain to my son, so when I saw the picture, you know, I recoiled for a second, but then I followed the girl's Instagram back a few months, and was able to figure out his Instagram ID. Then I searched for that same ID name on Twitter, and sure enough he has a Twitter account with the same ID. Now I can "follow" him on Twitter, (without really following) because his Twitter account isn't locked down like the Instagram one is. Does any of this matter? No. I'm a parent. I'm going to do NOTHING with the information. Ever. But does that prevent someone else from following the same path I did to get dirt on him? No. The whole thing took me about 10 clicks.
I guess ethically the right thing to do would be to tell him he should change one of those ID names, but, well, THAT would be super weird.
All I'm saying is... I found this guy because of ONE picture somebody ELSE posted of him that was tagged with the college he goes to. In that one picture, there were no names, no tags back to a person, just a random but often used school tag. If you are serious about protecting your social media presence and you're not sure what you're doing, just don't post anything publicly. And when the girlfriend's friend takes a picture of you, say outloud, "No pictures of me in your Instagram. It's a military thing."
/end public service announcement