How Social Media Bragging Can Make You A Target
Over the years, social media has gone through significant changes and improvements while maintaining its main purpose – to forge and strengthen connections. Different social media platforms allow you to share life highlights and memories as well as connect with others from around the globe. From posting your latest beach trip photos to updating your pin location whenever you travel and even going as far as posting personal problems, you and many others are constantly sharing on social media life updates, and this has become the norm. While social media was not developed to bring harm and chaos to users, irresponsible usage, such as unfiltered posting of everything going on in your life, can be dangerous.
There’s been a lot of controversies surrounding social media – both good and bad; both helpful and detrimental to our society. While there are many opinions backing each one, we do need to be careful of certain bad things that happen on social media, such as online stalking that results in a home break-in.
So, be informed on how burglars use social media as a tool to target their victims, and how you can protect yourself from becoming a victim. We will also explain how products like The Space Safe can help keep your valuables protected if you do become a victim.
How Burglars May Use Social Media as A Tool
The information that burglars want to get from their target is now readily available through social media profiles. Some of the common posts that result in theft are mostly linked to social media bragging. Here are a few types of posts that burglars may find useful in detecting their victims:
1. Geo-Tagging and Checking In
Most of today’s smartphones, if not all, have built-in GPS trackers that are useful when finding your way around a particular area. When enabled on social media platforms, this GPS tracker is responsible for detecting your location should you want to pin it on your social media account. While this feature is meant for good technological development, burglars use it to their advantage and if you constantly use this feature to brag about where you are in the world, you are making yourself vulnerable. Burglars will find out that you’re away from your home and they can easily break in and steal your valuables, that is why you must avoid posting your whereabouts and keep your valuables secured in a reliable biometric safe, such as The Space Safe.
2. Showing Off Lavish Lifestyle
We know you worked so hard for everything that you have right now, especially your wealth and lifestyle, but showing off what you have for the world to see is bait for burglars. Posting your wealth and valuables on social media gives burglars the exact idea of what’s inside your home. So, instead of showing off your valuables, secure them in our recommended fingerprint safe – The Space Safe.
3. Holiday Posts
While you may not always announce your location when you’re out for a holiday vacation, you may post real-time photos of yourself in the airport or a place that’s far away from home, and it still invites theft. It may seem harmless to you, but burglars see it as a cue to intrude on your house. So, if you want to show off your holiday photos on social media, you can do a throwback and post them once you are back home already.
4. Virtual Home Tours
While home tours are particularly popular with celebrities and influencers, anybody with a social media account can do this too. Home tours provide a detailed look into somebody’s home with major descriptions on the overall design and decorations. While owners may not explicitly mention where the entry points are located, it will still be visible on video and burglars can easily take a closer look to identify where they can possibly enter.
Protect Yourself
It is crucial that you know how to keep yourself safe while enjoying social media. Here are a few things you can do to avoid being a victim:
1. Filter What You Post on Social Media
Contain yourself not to post everything on social media, especially your personal details, wealth, and whereabouts. Credits to social media, anyone can now browse through your accounts and keep tabs on your activities, so make sure to post cautiously. Never share images of your recent purchases and don’t broadcast your regular routine because these are perfect opportunities for burglars to identify their victims.
2. Secure Your Home
Before going out on a holiday vacation, make sure to secure your home and inform a trusted family member that you are going away. Install security cameras, motion sensor lights, and video doorbells so you will find out if anyone tries to enter your home. Most importantly, secure all your valuables, such as cash, jewelry, spare keys, IDs, and important documents inside a trusted biometric safe. Burglars break in intending to steal as many valuables as possible, to avoid this from happening, it pays to be proactive and think ahead by securing your valuables inside The Space Safe – our recommended best home safe. Why do we trust The Space Safe?
Interior and Exterior Cameras
The Space Safe is the world’s pioneering safe box equipped with interior and exterior cameras. In cases of a break-in, you will automatically identify the culprit when he tries to access your safe and steal your valuables. You can view the footage that reveals the culprit’s face on the camera feed of your Space Safe app. You need not worry about your valuables when you’re on vacation because with this brilliant feature, you have first-hand information on whoever touches your safe.
Lockdown
If somebody tampers with the safe and tries three different unsuccessful PIN codes, it will automatically go into lockdown mode where the LCD will be inaccessible, and the alarms will go off. The best part about this is you can notify 911 about the break-in through the app so the culprit can’t get away. Best of all, you will be notified the instant the culprit types in a wrong code while he remains oblivious that you know what he’s doing, so you are steps ahead of him.
Unique Design and Screensavers
The Space Safe is built with a large LCD that’s brilliantly equipped with screensavers that can be used to deter burglars, making it the first smart fingerprint safe of its kind. The screensaver comes with four choices; you can choose to display a faux radio, faux printer, weather monitoring system, or your favorite image. We suggest that you use your favorite image because burglars usually don’t think of stealing picture frames.
Furthermore, the safe doesn’t resemble a typical square-faced safe box with digital keypads and knobs. The Space Safe is uniquely designed to blend in with the rest of your home decor so you can effortlessly hide it in plain sight.
Beware of Strangers
Almost all of us grew up with the advice not to talk to strangers. Cliché as it may sound, it still holds true today both personally and in social media. It can be so easy for people to make fake accounts with fake names and images. These people may not be who they really are, and they can track you and may talk to you online. If you respond to them and make a connection, they will gain your trust and take your personal details, such as your full name, birthday, and home address to name a few.
With that, be careful with whom you talk to online, and don’t give away confidential details. It’s safe to limit your profiles to friends and families so you are virtually surrounded by people whom you know personally.
Benefits of Social Media
We’re not trying to scare you off social media with this post. There are a lot of good things in social media that are helpful in all aspects of life, be it in building relationships, finding new leads for business, learning about new restaurants, keeping up with friends and families, sharing your expertise, and a lot more. It goes to say that social media isn’t bad and using it in the right way will bring you a lot of benefits. Therefore, don’t put down your social media accounts to get rid of burglars and stalkers; instead, put your guard up and be a responsible user.
Key Takeaway
While social media is filled with great people and is a wonderful place for keeping old and creating new connections, there are also people looking out for victims. Thus, always be a careful and responsible user, and be proactive in keeping yourself safe and secure by filtering what you post online and keeping your valuables in The Space Safe at home – the most innovative biometric safe in the market.
Get it now at www.TheSpaceSafe.com.
Images used are not a property of SPACE and are used for inspiration to discuss products.
– Charisse Thompson