While there’s not much you can do about data breaches that happen from the services you use, since it’s up to each company to fix these security holes, there are steps you can take to protect your phone from sharing private information with apps.

Read More: Protect Your Personal Information When Using Public Wi-Fi

Here are 4 ways you can protect yourself from getting hacked, targeted for ads, and exposing your personal data for companies to collect.

Be Vigilant With Your Apps
One of the best ways to protect your data is to audit your apps, which can help you learn which apps are connected to your social media sites. Checking your privacy settings for Facebook, Google, and Twitter can help you see which apps are linked to those accounts.

On Facebook, go to the top-right corner, hit the down arrow, click Settings and check the Apps tab. Here you can choose which apps retain access of your personal information. In Google, go to Settings and hit “Connected apps & sites,” and on Twitter, you go to “Settings and privacy” and hit the Apps page. At that point, you can minimize which apps are linked to each social account.

Delete Old Apps
If there are some old games and apps you’re no longer using that are still hanging around, make sure to delete them. By getting rid of them, these apps will not be able to collect any additional personal information about you, along with all the data stored within them.

Change Your Password Every 6 Months
Another good rule of thumb is to change your password every 6 months to keep passwords fresh and prevent hacking attacks targeted at you. If someone manages to get their hands on your hashed password, they’ll be able to use decryption methods to attain the full password. You could change your passwords more often than every 6 months, but make that the minimum amount of time to update your passwords.

Read Privacy Policies
Some apps may have lengthy privacy policies, but these are worth reading because they give you a solid idea how much data each app shares or guards. If you need to connect your personal data to the app, make sure the app comes from a reliable source and you know exactly how much information it’s gathering.

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A good way to maintain your privacy is by using dfndr security, which has a social guardian feature that lets you create an additional password to keep snoops at bay. Best of all, you get to choose which apps to protect.

Read More: 5 Personal Details You Should Never Post on Social Media

Here are some reasons why you might want to consider specific protection for social media apps:

• Parents and ex-girlfriends/boyfriends: Social media apps such as Facebook share all of your personal and biographical information with anyone who sees your account, especially if you don’t enforce the right privacy protocols. Not everyone needs to see your pics and status updates, especially your parents, colleagues, exes, current partners, or acquaintances. It’s worth considering activating additional security to your account. The good thing about these apps is that you can choose how much of your profile each person gets to see. You can change your security settings by hitting the down arrow on the top-right corner and choosing Settings. You can then choose Privacy and you’ll be given a slew of options regarding the visibility of your timeline,  your public profile, and messaging options.
• Check your privacy settings: If you don’t implement your preferred privacy settings on social media, the default settings may expose you to outsiders. Before you post anything on social media, explore each app’s privacy settings in order to choose who views your status or timeline and who doesn’t — the same is true for your profile and your personal information. You can even protect your birth date, location, or other biographical information on your account.
• Social media security tips: Pick a strong password with numbers, capitalized letters and symbols for maximum security. It’s also important to use different passwords for different accounts that are not easily guessed. Plus, you should avoid accessing social media apps in public, but if you do, log out before you leave. Be wary of any links sent to you, even if they are from friends as these could be phishing scams or malware, and your friends’ accounts could have been hacked.
• Protect yourself from hackers: In addition to ensuring your privacy and choosing a strong password, change your password regularly to keep hackers guessing. You may also get a message that’s not grammatically correct from a friend, which may mean that it’s coming from a hacker or a bot. Social media apps also have help centers, so if you believe you’ve been hacked or your personal information has been compromised, don’t hesitate to contact support.

Taking the above steps to stay on top of social media security can allow you to enjoy them so much more. 

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Even though I had fun times, there were definitely things I would have liked to know before pitching my tent and digging into what the festival has to offer. To help all you newbies out there, here is my ultimate survival guide to making sure you have a Coachella to remember:  

#1 – Bring a hydration backpack! It’s hot in the desert and this will save time on trips to water refill stations and save money from needing to buy water bottles all weekend. Plus, you won’t add negative points to your ecological footprint.

#2 – Pack an EZ-UP for shade on your campsite. The sun is always shining at Coachella and nothing is worse than having your tent turn into an oven from baking in sunlight all day. Or if you’re staying at an Airbnb with a pool, make sure to bring your flamingo, unicorn, or pegasus floaties!

#3 – Take a portable phone charger. Everyone uses their phone at Coachella for videos, photos, and connecting with friends. The public charging stations are super packed and will take time away from you being able to enjoy the event. A portable charger can solve this problem, but in circumstances when your phone is not charging and you need the battery to last, use dfndr battery to combat battery drain. That way you won’t miss a single moment.

#4 – Cover your face. A bandana or facemask is crucial to have for the dust in the air. You don’t want that dust in your lungs. Sunscreen is also important when you’re in the sun for 10 hours or more a day. And don’t forget extra sun coverage like a hat and sunglasses.

#5 – Spring for an air mattress if you’re camping. The campsites are all grass, but the ground is not that comfortable to sleep on all night long (dependent on when you do get to bed). 

#6 – Beat the crowds before hunger pains hit. Getting food earlier in the day is much better than later. Lines for food can get really long as the night goes on, not to mention popular menu items often sell out each day.  

#7 – Head to Do LaB. If you’re looking for a place to cool off while still enjoying some music, Do LaB is the place to be. Dance up a storm as water guns spray into the crowd to keep you refreshed. Like a sprinkler on a sweltering, summer day!

#8 – Make a plan. Check out the daily lineup ahead of time and talk to your group about which stage you’ll head to and at what time. Then forget about the plan and just live in the moment!

#9 – Capture the antics. After 2 full days of taking photos and videos of your favorites acts, it’s very likely that you might run out of storage on your phone. Use dfndr performance to clean duplicate photos and other junk files so you have more room for epic festival memories.

#10 – Hide the evidence. What happens at Coachella stays at Coachella! Feel free to virtually “lock” your #NSFW photos with a private gallery app, such as dfndr vault. Go ahead, we won’t judge.

Now that you know all the essentials for the most colossal Coachella experience, you should be ready to have the time of your life. The event runs over 2 weekends, April 13-15 and April 20-22. This year is gonna be the best one yet!

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In 2015, Snapchat updated their Terms and Conditions to assert a “worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to host, store, use, display, reproduce, modify…and publicly display” all content sent through or uploaded to the app. In short, users relinquished all control of the messages and photos send over Snapchat to the company itself. As the nearly identical Stories features from Instagram and Facebook gain prominence, a look into these competitors’ data policies shows similar privacy dangers. Under the privacy policies of both companies, the photos and videos posted on users’ stories are collected, stored, and potentially used.

Instagram stories

After being acquired by Facebook, Instagram launched its “Stories” feature in August 2016 to accusations of copying. The new tool appeared to be a direct replica of Snapchat’s Story feature. They both shared a time limit, location tags, filters, and other elements. The company also borrowed another tactic from Snapchat: the practice of saving all photos and videos from user’s Stories to the company’s servers. While users can control who will see their story, with the option to set their account to private or hide stories from select followers, they have no control over whether Instagram stores their photos and what the app does with them.

Read More: The Best Apps for Summer Studying and Test Prep

Facebook Stories

After rolling out stories on the recently acquired Instagram platform, Facebook announced the roll out of its own Snapchat Stories spinoff. This new service, as with Instagram Stories, includes filters, effects, and a time limit. While it is not clear whether Facebook stores all photos and videos on its servers as Instagram and Snapchat do, a quick look at the company’s Data Policy makes it clear that the company is collecting some of this information. Under the policy, Facebook is allowed to collect “things you do and information you provide.” Using the information, the platform is able to “communicate with you,” “provide, improve, and develop services,” and “show and measure ads and services.”

Safety Tips

With these privacy concerns in mind, social media safety becomes more important than ever. Users should keep in mind the community guidelines of each platform. These guidelines typically prohibit material that is intentionally offensive, insulting, or threatening, violates the privacy of another user, displays individuals engaged in dangerous or illegal activity, or potentially threatens anyone’s immediate safety. In short, Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram’s privacy policies should make users hyperaware of the permanence of information posted online.

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Before you update the app, make sure that you have enough space on your device for app and software updates, in addition to new apps, files, and photos. Many social networking apps, and messaging apps like WhatsApp, bloat in size over time because of all of the data they collect and store. To prepare for the update, clean out your WhatsApp app with dfndr security’s WhatsApp Cleaner. Doing so will remove old, unwanted files so that you have more space on your device. If you want to keep any old files, though, you can still do so — you can specifically select which files you want to remove from your phone. Click here to remove old, unwanted files from WhatsApp:

Another Way to Keep in Touch With Friends and Family
Unlike Snapchat and Instagram, the feature is only available to your WhatsApp contacts — other WhatsApp users that you don’t know can’t see your status updates. You can share your status updates with select individuals or all of your contacts. Since WhatsApp originally started as a way for you to keep in touch with friends and family — especially if they’re spread out over many countries — this new status feature is a great way to celebrate their birthday. It gives you a more personal way to stay in touch with others.

What Does the Status Update Offer?
Previously, you were only able to add text to your WhatsApp status update. Now, you can add photos, videos, and GIFs to better express yourself. You can share videos up to 45 seconds long — a serious improvement from other video-sharing apps. Similar to Snapchat and Instagram, your status updates only last a certain amount of time. After 24 hours, your WhatsApp status will disappear. This is meant to encourage you to constantly update your status. If anyone responds to your status update, you’ll see it in a private message, not a public comment chain. Further, like the rest of WhatsApp’s offerings, all of your status updates will feature end-to-end encryption.

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Therefore, if you take a lot of photos on your device, and edit and share them on Instagram and other social networks, then you should regularly back up and organize all of your photos. You’ll want to remove old photos and any photos that you no longer want or need on your device. Use dfndr security’s duplicate photos feature to quickly scan your device for repeated photos. You can then see all of the duplicate photos on your device, and easily remove them with the touch of a button — no need to waste time searching through tiny thumbnails for repeated images. Click here to remove duplicate photos and free up space on your device:

Instagram’s New Photo Feature
Advertisers on Instagram have been able to feature multiple photos in a single post for a while now, but recently, Instagram started testing out this feature on its users. This feature is great for showing a series of photos from a vacation or a birthday party, or a big life event like a wedding or having a baby. In this way it’s similar to an Instagram Story — only these photos don’t disappear after a select amount of time. You can share up to 10 photos and videos with this feature.

How to Share Multiple Photos and Videos
Open the Instagram app and then hit the “+” icon at the bottom of the screen. Click the image that you want to add, and then select “multiple photos.” Then, locate and click the other images that you want to add to the slideshow. You can click a photo again to remove it, or change the sequence of the photos by holding in a photo and dragging it to its desired spot. Once this is complete, you can then edit each photo or choose one filter for all of them. You’ll then be able to add a caption and share your photos. A series of dots will be displayed underneath your first photo to indicate that you have a slideshow.

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Luckily, dfndr vault will help you to keep your private photos for your eyes only.  Encrypt your photos, back them up on a cloud storage of your choice, and use the dfndr vault key to ‘unlock’ them and view them whenever you want.  Click here to hide your private photos in a hidden gallery:

For those photos that you want to share on Instagram, you now have a new way of sharing them, by creating “galleries.” You can share up to ten photos and videos in a post. This new feature is similar to the Instagram Stories feature in that it allows you to group a select number of photos together in one post. Unlike Instagram Stories, your gallery photos won’t disappear after a select amount of time.

How to Create an Instagram Gallery

1. Open the Instagram app. Next, click the “+” icon at the bottom of the screen, as you normally would whenever you want to add a new photo to Instagram.
2. Locate the image that you want to add to the gallery. Click on the image and then select the “multiple photos” option on the screen.
3. Pick which photos you want to be a part of the gallery. Click on the images that you want to add to the gallery. If you want to remove a photo, you can simply click an image again to remove it from your gallery. If you want to change the order of the photos, you can long-press a photo and drag it to where you want it in the gallery.
4. After you have chosen your photos, and the order in which you want them to be displayed, you can edit the photos individually or as a whole by choosing a single filter for all of the photos.
5. Then, create your caption. You can only create one caption for all of the photos; you can’t have a caption for each photo.
6. Now, share your gallery. To show that you have posted a gallery, a series of dots will be displayed under the first photo to indicate that there is a series of photos for your friends to look at.

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If your New Year’s resolution is to be more organized, then this could be the perfect way to achieve your goal. Still confused? Check out some of the following Instagram accounts for further explanation of what a bullet journal is. These accounts serve as great inspiration for not only creating your own bullet journal, but for organizing your life in 2017.

Read More: The Most Followed Celebrity Twitter Accounts

@bulletjournal

The bullet journal was originally developed by Ryder Carroll, and this is her account. She considers the bullet journal to be an exercise in mindfulness. Her account mainly consists of sharing others’ bullet journals, so you’ll be sure to get a lot of “BuJo” inspiration from this account.

@focusign

This account dominantly focuses on a minimalistic approach to bullet journals. But the journaler also uses her journal to keep track of keepsake items, such as plays she went to, or Christmas cards that she received. If you’re interested in a less-intimidating version of bullet journaling, then this is a good account to look at. She shows that all you really need to make a bullet journal are a few good pens, an organized to-do list, and a splash of color.

@penpapersoul

This bullet journal account is a mix of drawings, watercolor paintings, to-do lists, keepsakes, and travel scrapbooks, among others. It’s also interesting to see how her account evolved over time. This is a great account to follow if you want to make your journal more creative.

@howtobulletjournal

This account is another less-intimidating approach to bullet journaling, depending on how you look at it. Her account focuses on diary entries in addition to to-do lists and goals, which is the easier approach to bullet journaling. But she also includes drawings and monthly themes, to really make her pages stand out.

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Facebook and Messenger

It should come as no surprise that both the Facebook app and its Messenger app were among the most downloaded apps of the year. With over one billion regular users, Facebook is the most popular social network in the world, and Messenger is its instant messaging service. With text, voice, and video messaging capabilities between individuals or groups, as well as the option to call friends around the world, Messenger has become one of the most widely used methods of smartphone communication.

Read More: A Round-Up of the Five Best Online Banking Apps

YouTube

YouTube, the go-to place for video content on the Internet, was also extremely popular. According to the video hub, about 1/3 of the people who use the Internet use YouTube. Every single day people around the world watch hundreds of millions of hours of YouTube content. And the majority of them do so using their smartphones.

Instagram

As of December 2016, the community boasted 600 million Instagrammers; 100 million of them joined in the last six months. It was the year that they introduced Instagram Stories, a feature that lets users post photos and videos that appear as a slideshow and last for 24 hours. The update has been widely embraced, even though it is very similar to Snapchat’s Stories feature.

Snapchat

Speaking of Snapchat, the photo and video-sending app was also among the most used apps of the year. The app allows users to share images and short videos that disappear after seconds, as well as slideshows that last a day. In the US, 60% of young smartphone users are on Snapchat. And now, with seemingly endless opportunities to get creative by taking advantage of filters, geotags, stickers, and drawing capabilities, it’s no wonder the app was so popular in 2016.

Pokémon Go

This app exploded onto the digital scene in 2016. Harnessing the popularity of Pokémon over the last two decades, the app uses augmented reality, which connects real-world locations and geography with virtual components. Within days of the app’s release, millions of users were walking the streets of their neighborhoods in search of Pokémon to catch. Although the initial fervor around the app has died down considerably, there’s no doubt that Pokémon Go was one of the most popular apps of the year.

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To close the distance between the initial interest in an item, and the off-app purchase of the item, Instagram has released a new shopping feature that allows you to buy an item listed through the app. With this feature, you won’t have to juggle a separate shopping app or account to view and purchase the Instagrammed items you’re interested in. Everything is done through the app.

Read More: Your Guide to Deleting Your Instagram Accounts

Which Brands Are Involved?

Many different brands, such as Warby Parker, Kate Spade, JackThreads, and Coach, are participating in the trial run of the new shopping feature. Currently, however, the shopping feature is only available for US brands. If this feature is successful during the trial phase, it could prove especially popular for trendy startup companies and international users and businesses.

How to Shop on Instagram

Whenever you view an Instagram photo of an outfit, you can now view all of the shoppable items in a post. Brands can have up to five shoppable items per post. Simply click on an item in the post to find out the price and any additional details. If you want to purchase the item, click “shop now.” You’ll then be directed to the store’s website.

Why This Feature?

Increasingly, consumers are researching, browsing, or purchasing products on their smartphones as opposed to a laptop or PC. Instagram wants to make this process even easier, by allowing you to shop for the items that inspire you directly in the app, instead of through Chrome, for example.

Why This Could Work on Instagram

Of course, this feature is only for select retailers currently, but if it proves to be successful, more retailers may become involved in the future. While other social media networks like Facebook and Twitter have had little success with e-commerce, this feature could work well with Instagram. Many fashion bloggers have turned to Instagram over the years for ease of maintenance. Their Instagrams can often be more popular than their websites. Thus, Instagram’s new shopping feature allows followers to further engage with Instagram and the brand, or blogs, they love.

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