Stay safe while blogging and using social media

We all know steem is a great platform with huge potential but it is vital that we all stay safe while consuming content not only here but on any social media platform. Over the past weeks I have seen an increased amount of posts relating to getting free money or other such sketchy content and it really concerns me about the potential threat.

Please remember that if something sounds too good to be true, it most probably is.

Now there is probably a lot of people out thinking that well DUH, I wasn't born yesterday but the fact that Nigerian Prince's are still scamming people today out of millions of dollars then we still need to be proactive and get the word out and often. Ask the companies that suffered greatly from the latest global attacks like wannacry and Notpetya which came simply from clicking on links.

So what can I do to keep myself safe on social media.

Firstly clicking on links is one of the most common forms of attack and users can be tricked into these by emails or other links shared socially. They can pretend to have come from friends, government organisations, utilities like power companies and even banks and in recent years we have seen an explosion of scams that have cost people and companies in the billions of dollars. Any links especially shortened ones can be used with great effect and unless you absolutely trust the person sending you the link you should show great caution and never click blindly on any links whether unsolicited or not. Here on steem we do not have a character restriction when posting, like twitter, so there is no real reason why anyone needs to use a shortened URL.

If you are unsure of what shortened URL is, it is simply the process of taking a normal website address like my profile for example and running it through a shortner like google or bitly. It is often used to obfuscate the true path of the link.

My profile https://steemit.com/@simondocherty
and shortened http://bit.ly/2tYne0B

If a post contains embedded links obfuscated in text as per the picture below, you can hover over the word with your cursor and then see the path in the bottom left hand corner of your browser.

If you are really unsure of the website or where the link goes but are still curious you can always check the path via a link finder like http://wheredoesthislinkgo.com/ or use a website to determine safe sites like http://onlinelinkscan.com/. There are also add-ons for most browsers these days that allow you to simply right click on the link to show its full path.

Please do not automatically trust everyone and stay safe!

If this has helped you great, please let me know in the comments and if it hasn't then you are probably in the top 20% of internet users, so please lets help others to protect themselves. Maybe sharing this would help or maybe writing your own guide would be better. In either case lets make steem safe for all.

Cheers and have a great day