{"id":22354,"date":"2023-06-30T16:10:08","date_gmt":"2023-07-01T00:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2023\/06\/30\/news-16084\/"},"modified":"2023-06-30T16:10:08","modified_gmt":"2023-07-01T00:10:08","slug":"news-16084","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2023\/06\/30\/news-16084\/","title":{"rendered":"Online safety tips for LGBTQIA+ communities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The internet is great for bringing people together, helping you feel part of a community, and staying in touch with your nearest and dearest. But it can also be a nasty place &#8211; from malware to scammers, to people just being plain awful to others. It&#8217;s probably not surprising to read that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.adl.org\/resources\/report\/online-hate-and-harassment-american-experience-2023\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">recent research by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL<\/a>) showed LGBTQAI+ people were the marginalized group most harassed online, with&nbsp;51% of transgender people and 47% of LGBQ+ people&mdash;compared with 33% of all Americans&mdash; reporting online harassment of some sort within the last 12 months.<\/p>\n<p>So, while the tips below are good advice for anyone, the stats show it&#8217;s tougher online for LGBTQAI+ people, and that means it&#8217;s really important to do as many of them as you can. Think we missed anything? Let us know in the comments section.<\/p>\n<h2>1. Secure your online accounts<\/h2>\n<p>Avoid handing over your accounts to anyone who shouldn&rsquo;t have access by getting the security basics right.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Use strong, unique passwords for every account<\/li>\n<li>Consider a password manager to help you keep hold of all those passwords<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/news\/2023\/05\/the-one-and-only-password-tip-you-need\">Enable MFA<\/a> wherever you can.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These three things do take a bit more time&nbsp;than if you didn&rsquo;t do them, but they are the best way to keep your accounts secure.<\/p>\n<h2>2. Deal with cyberbullies<\/h2>\n<p>If someone is bullying you online, block and report them as soon as you can. Pretty much every platform will offer this function, so make sure you use it. Confide in a trusted friend or family member, especially if the bullying is having a significant impact on your mental health. And, if the bullying has reached criminal proportions, consider reporting it to the relevant authority in your region.<\/p>\n<h2>3. Be careful when meeting an online friend IRL<\/h2>\n<p>It would be all too easy to say &ldquo;never meet anyone&nbsp;face to face&nbsp;that you met online,&rdquo; but that&rsquo;s not practical. However, there are some things you can do to stay as safe as possible.<\/p>\n<p>Meet in a public place, and let a friend know who you are meeting and where. Then check in with them after you return home.<\/p>\n<p>Make sure&nbsp;the&nbsp;person is who they say they are by doing a reverse image search of the person&rsquo;s picture. If you see the same image posted next to someone else&rsquo;s name, or even multiple people&#8217;s names, then you might well be talking to a scammer.<\/p>\n<h2>4.&nbsp;&nbsp;Stay safe on social<\/h2>\n<p>Don&rsquo;t reveal personal information about you such as your address or date of birth which could be used by fraudsters, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/doxxing\" target=\"_blank\">doxxers<\/a> or stalkers. If you&rsquo;re going away then leave that information off your social media until you return, so your home isn&rsquo;t targeted.<\/p>\n<p>It&rsquo;s worth periodically checking your social media privacy settings too to make sure they&rsquo;re at the level you are comfortable with.<\/p>\n<h2>5. Respect others&#8217; privacy<\/h2>\n<p>Sure, you might want to show off your camo jumpsuit to your Instagram followers, but maybe&nbsp;the go-go dancer behind you doesn&#8217;t want their photo published online. If someone is in a photo that you want to put online, make sure you get explicit consent from them before posting.<\/p>\n<h2>6. Steer clear of hate<\/h2>\n<p>Finally, we all know there is a lot of nasty stuff going on online. It&rsquo;s easy to get sucked into reading or interacting with others you disagree with, but that also might be detrimental to your mental health.&nbsp;The hate comes from within them, and it isn&#8217;t worth your energy to engage with them. If you know there&rsquo;s a forum, comments section or somewhere else where you&rsquo;re likely to encounter hate, avoid it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>We don&rsquo;t just&nbsp;talk about threats&mdash;we remove them<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep threats off your devices by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/for-home\">downloading Malwarebytes today<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/personal\/2023\/06\/online-safety-tips-for-lgbtqia-communities\" target=\"bwo\" >https:\/\/blog.malwarebytes.com\/feed\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<table cellpadding=\"10\">\n<tr>\n<td valign=\"top\" align=\"left\">\n<p>Categories: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/category\/personal\" rel=\"category tag\">Personal<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The internet is great for bringing people together, but it can also be a nasty place. Here are some tips to help keep you as safe as possible online.<\/p>\n<table width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n<td align=\"right\">\n<p><b>(<a href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/personal\/2023\/06\/online-safety-tips-for-lgbtqia-communities\" title=\"Online safety tips for LGBTQIA+ communities\">Read more&#8230;<\/a>)<\/b><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/personal\/2023\/06\/online-safety-tips-for-lgbtqia-communities\">Online safety tips for LGBTQIA+ communities<\/a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\">Malwarebytes Labs<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[10488,10378],"tags":[26699],"class_list":["post-22354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malwarebytes","category-security","tag-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}