FOX CROSSING, WI (WTAQ) – Fox Crossing Police have addressed a higher than the usual number of cases involving unwanted social media contact recently. Those messages include everything from scammers to unknown individuals harassing others online.
“It does happen rarely. A lot of times people kind of pick up on it and catch these problems, but sometimes they’re not certain whether or not it’s legitimate. We get involved when they give us a call and we try to guide them the best we can in order to resolve it,” says Community Liasion Officer Dan Wiechman.
If you’re receiving a message over social media from someone you don’t know – odds are, they’re not as friendly as they may seem. Oftentimes they will warm you up before making demands of personal information, money, or even explicit images.
“Obviously they’re trying to get something and play on your emotions and fears and benefit from that. Don’t give them any information whatsoever and just delete that conversation altogether,” Wiechman says, “Especially if you don’t know who the person is, just simply deleting it or if you’re able to block that contact from ever reaching you on that platform – that’s one of the better choices to make.”
In this age, most social media users are able to identify a fake account through the telltale signs – like the account being recently created or having no other friends or followers. But that is often observed and learned through the experience of using the sites.
“I think a lot of people through social media itself have been educated on what to watch for,” Wiechman tells WTAQ News, “But there are still some who just get into it. There’s always the person who has never had a Twitter account, a Facebook, an Instagram – whatever – and they’re new to it, just like we all were at some point. They need to learn the tricks of the trade as well.”
Locking down the privacy and security of your account can prevent people from contacting you, but it can also block them from seeing anything you post.
“Where you may live or where you’re on vacation – all of those things can be obtained from the innocent posts we put up. And they can be used negatively against us,” Wiechman says.
If you’re looking for ways to tighten up your privacy settings on social media, there are tons of resources available online. But to make that search easier for everyone, we will include links to the basic privacy settings for some of the more common sites here – like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat.
For other apps or sites, the answer should be easy to track down by simply entering the app name, followed by “Privacy Settings” in a Google search.
