A woman had her flight cancelled after oversharing on social media.
The woman posted an unfiltered and unedited photograph of her booking, which included absolutely everything from her full government name to her booking ID, and apparently somebody cancelled her flight. Possibly as a prank.
That gave me an idea for a post.
Ideally, you'd wanna stay off social media. But most people don't. So at least we should try to be smart about it.
So, if you absolutely have to share stuff on social media, these are some rules you should follow.
- Never share pictures of screenshots of tickets or bookings, but if you must, redact and hide everything, especially booking ID, date and time.
- In theory, most countries in the world have laws against filming people in public without their consent but, in practice, those laws are almost never enforced because they are impossible to enforce. Even so, try to avoid including people's faces in your post, not just because technically you shouldn't but mostly out of courtesy.
- And absolutely do not include faces of people under 18 in your posts unless you've got their parents' written consent. By the way, this always applies, even if those pictures were shared by parents on social media in the first place, you still need permission to reshare them. That's the reason why when some magazines (they should all do it, but only some do) share photographs of famous celebrities on holiday or out for dinner or whatever, they often blur the kids' faces.
- If I share pics or videos about an event (party, dinner, trip), I always do it after, not during. A, for extra safety B, because it's rude to be on your phone with people around C, because it's okay to film it but dammit at least enjoy it and D, I'm superstitious.
- Don't share addresses, not your own, not other people's. Which also means, don't share pictures that could potentially allow viewers to detect the address. And remember that virtually every corner of the planet is easily recognisable using a combination of Google Maps, Earth and Lens.
- Turn off geotagging and location services whenever you can.
Bonus round:
Don't share anything illegal.
For some reason, people often share things that are illegal on social media. For example, people often share POV videos of their driving at speeds that are higher than the speed limit. That's potentially doubly illegal.
If you filmed the clip with a GoPro mounted on your forehead or smart glasses, that's fine, but if you filmed it with your phone, technically that's illegal.
And if you're in 30 mph area, and we can see from your video that you're driving at 31, technically that's also illegal.
