You return from a weekend away to find your home broken into and your new laptop stolen.
It doesn’t take a detective to figure out what happened: your social media oversharing. By revealing where you live through geotagged photos, sharing updates about your holiday planning, and posting live updates while you’re away, you told the world when your home would be empty. We all love sharing our moments online, but sometimes, those posts can reveal more than we realise.
The good news, in our connected age of scams and hoaxes, is that home security systems are more high-tech than ever. The bad news is that burglars are watching social media to identify their next victims.
Social Media As A Stalking Tool
Online safety is about more than protecting your digital life. The lines between online and offline are blurred, and you need to secure your physical safety too. And just like online scams can happen to smart people, it’s easy to get caught by real-world criminals too.
Burglars are especially interested in your physical location and your daily routines. So beware of posting your location online. Some social apps have location settings that can pinpoint your location to within a few metres.
Secure Your Digital Footprint
To check your live location settings on Facebook for Android, open your device’s Settings, go to Apps, select Facebook, tap Permissions, then Location, and choose Deny to stop Facebook from accessing your location. Alternatively, long-press the Facebook app icon, tap App Info, then Permissions, then Location, and set it to Deny or Not allowed. On iPhone, open Settings, scroll to Facebook, tap Location, and select Never to disable location access.
Also check your privacy settings for LinkedIn, Pinterest, X, Bluesky, Discord, Snapchat, Truth (if you’re using it) and Tumblr (if you’re still there).
Neither TikTok nor Instagram broadcasts your real-time location to followers or the public, but if you’re sharing a live Reel or Story with Table Mountain behind you, it won’t take a master criminal to figure out that you’re not at home in Joburg.
Social Media Unravels Your Routine
Be mindful of broadcasting your routines as well. If you’re a runner or rider, Strava will only share your live location data if you explicitly enable its Beacon feature (and even then, it’s only shared privately with selected contacts). But if someone tracks your Strava posts over an extended period, they’ll quickly work out that you go for a two-hour run every Saturday morning at 8am.
Social Media Is For Shining, Not Stumbling
Burglars are always on the lookout for small pieces of information about you, and they’ll stitch the details together to create an identity to scam. Whatever you post, and whenever you post it, try to keep things vague. Don’t share dates and places; instead, wait until you’re back at home before posting your holiday pics.
And remember, even if you only have a small group of friends or followers, they could share or repost your content to their audiences. The golden rule is: assume that the whole world is watching you. If you don’t want something to be widely broadcast, then don’t post it online – regardless of your privacy settings.
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