How to hide your location on Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

Your social media posts could be putting you at risk.

While we don’t know if social media played a role in Kim Kardahsian West being held up at gunpoint in a Paris hotel, some have said that her frequent posts in the hours before the robbery could have helped inform the people behind the attack.

While it’s still speculation at this point, it serves as a good reminder for everyone — celebrity or not — to be conscious of what they’re sharing on social media. Even the smallest updates can give criminals clues to your location.

If you don’t want to quit posting to social media, there are steps you can take to protect yourself. Here’s what you need to know about the accounts you may already have.

Snapchat
While Snapchat doesn’t allow you to tag your exact location in the same way other social networks like Facebook and Instagram do, your snaps can still give away much more than you realize.

Geofilters, for example, can easily identify a venue, neighborhood or specific event. This could be particularly problematic when you share to your Story, as these snaps are timestamped, making it easier to trace your whereabouts.

One way around them — something the Kardashian clan is apparently already aware of — is to post to Snapchat in airplane mode only. This is a workaround that allows you to “save” posts, since the app doesn’t actually have a save feature. Later, you can add the photos once you’ve left airplane mode by tapping “retry” on the failed posts (just remember to post in the original order.)

Additionally, with the new memories update, you can share photos to your Story that are saved in your Camera Roll. And photos that are less than 24 hours old will appear as they normally would, without the white border that appears when you share older photos.

Instagram
While Instagram doesn’t tag your photos’ location by default, there’s still a decent chance you have unwittingly shared a location you didn’t mean to at some point.

A previous version of Instagram allowed photos to be geotagged with your location when you uploaded them, even if you didn’t manually add a specific location. This means that you could have accidentally tagged the location of your home or workplace, and had it publicly viewable, without realizing it… see more

source: mashable

Tags: Hide Location, Instagram, Snapchat, technology

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