Warnings About Sharing Your Vacations on Social Media

Michelle Wilson - September 2, 2019

There is a lot we love about sharing our lives on social media. Especially when we have something we consider to be “really worth sharing”. After all, it’s usually you staring at someone else’s fun on your social stream, it’s about time you show everybody how you like to live it up. You’re finally getting out of the house and doing something amazing and you want everyone to know!

There is a lot to consider about before you decide what it is you want to share on social media. There is a little more to oversharing than just being annoyed with Aunt Judy posting pictures of her “Famous” Tuna Casserole (you can tell how impressed I am with it by combing through every other article by me and seeing just how many times I mention Aunt Judy’s casserole… hint* its zero…). You can absolutely share your experiences with your loved ones by first making sure you are taking care to protect yourself.

Privacy Is Important, Check Those Settings!

You are not a celebrity (unless… you… are… then this probably doesn’t apply much to you…), so you are not really impressing anyone outside of your monkey-sphere by posting everything publically. There is a myriad of reasons not to post publically but I’d like to touch here the biggest and most exploited one:

Thieves

We’ve established you probably aren’t a celebrity. But that doesn’t mean your home isn’t a prime choice for some thieves while you’re on vacay. Being vigilant isn’t the same thing as being paranoid. You don’t know everyone your friends know, so let’s not give anyone you aren’t directly associated with any reason to believe your home is currently vacant for an extended period of time.

Turn Off Geo Tagging

There are two means of geo tags I want to touch on here. Your social media posts, as well as the photos you are taking with your smartphone and smart cameras.

There are ways to search images on publically shared posts online by their geo tags. Connected Phones and Cameras have settings that allow you so save the geo tag location data to the image itself. This is how sometimes you may have noticed that when you upload an image to your social media account it asks you if you want tag XYZ location as if it recognizes it in the image, when in fact its supplied to them via the data in the image. Turn off this data. It’s not necessary. You know where you were and you can add it to your posts yourself if needed. Don’t give thieves any notice of where you will or will not be.

If sharing something publicly, do not share you location with it by tagging the location. This cannot be stressed enough. You are alerting everyone in the area of who you are, what you are doing and making you a prime target.

Geo Tagging is not necessary and you should consider whether or not to make it a part of your posts. For the most part, if you have checked your privacy settings already you should be alright.

Just Leave Your Home Out of It

You might mention your trip plans with your friends and family. You might discuss it on social media. But let’s leave all plans for your home out of the group conversations. It’s like ringing a dinner bell for those with nefarious intentions. Again repeat this mantra: Vigilance is not paranoia.

Post Vacation Checkup

Vacations are full of fun, sun (sometimes) and relaxation. But often enough tourists are targets and a lot of the time its months before we realize something is up. It’s not a bad time to do a quick checkup before melting into your post vacation contentment all cozied up in your own home.

With CheckPeople you can find out exactly what information is available about you online, as well as keep a monitoring of your data for future comfort. You can see all the public records data available on yourself as well as do a Dark Web Scan to see what, if any, data is available about you being traded and sold all over the world via the Dark Web.

If you do see something you don’t remember sharing or didn’t intend to be public, do a deep dive into your social media accounts to see if perhaps you accidentally leaked this information yourself and delete it.

Vigilance Is Not Paranoia

Going on vacation is supposed to be the high points of our lives. By remembering a few simple things, we can make sure to share our memories with only our loved ones and maintain our privacy at the same time. Stay safe and of course travel safe!