Travel Safe: Your Vacation Posts Might Reveal Your Whereabouts

Let’s rewind back about a decade ago when the news first reported about burglary risk from social media sites and that some burglars used social media to find targets.

Burglaries are even affecting high-profile NFL players!

Oversharing online can enable criminals to rob your home while you are away or invite them to ruin your time on your vacation. Criminals are watching your social media whether you are famous or not.

However, there are ways that you can increase your travel security and decrease the chances a criminal steals your belongings or crashes your vacation party. Below are tips to keep your mind at peace while you are on vacation and be able to return to your home just the way you left it.

• Perform a search of your name, phone, and residence address.

• Request data removal from online data brokers and search engines like Google, DuckDuckGo, and Bing.

• Limit or change the audience of your posts from public to private or to friends only.

• Limit who can tag you in posts or photos or remove tagged content.

• Review who your friends or followers are on social media, place them on a limited audience list, unfriend them or block them.

• Limit which social media platforms you post about your travels.

• Avoid live posting or geo-tagging your exact locations like hotels, restaurants, venues, or tourist attractions while on your trip.

• Avoid posting photos with sensitive details such as your plane ticket, hotel room number, or vehicle license plate.

• Consider just posting photos of your trip after you’ve returned home.

While you want to live in the moment and share your experiences in real-time with friends and family on social media, you might want to reconsider what you post online during your travels for your personal safety and security.

Happy and safe travels this summer season! ☀️

Read more about how you can protect yourself and how to increase your privacy on the internet.

• You’re Sharing Too Much on Social Media—and Scammers Love It | PCMag

• The dangers of oversharing | Microsoft Support

• The Unsettling Reason To Stop Posting Your Vacation Photos While You’re Away | Islands

• Bee Safe at Home: Summer travel and social media | Yale Cybersecurity

• How to delete your personal data from the internet: #deleteyourdata #cybersecurity | Cybersecurity Girl

• Find and remove personal info in Google Search results | Google Support

• DuckDuckGo Personal Information Removal | DuckDuckGo Help Pages

• How to report a concern or contact Bing | Microsoft Support

Note: the first image was generated by AI with the prompt “home burglary.”