The best thing for a person to do when they have lost their social media privacy is to start over. This is because the social networking systems treat every profile as different. Therefore, a person who starts a new profile is (in effect) starting a new file about themselves. This profile will be free of the ads that the social media system placed on the profile and the social media system will begin tracking that profile as best they can based on the information that the user provides.
Obviously, the problem with this method is that that social media user will have a hard time getting all their clients, friends, and family to follow the new profile. Even when a person lets their network know that they are changing profiles, they may not follow that profile anyway, or miss the post completely. This means that a person can miss some of their most important connections; therefore, it might behoove them to use both profiles until they can successfully migrate all their contacts to the new profile.
Another problem that changing profiles is that the user will have to take time to recreate the environment they were used to using in the past. This means that the applications and games will have be reinstalled into the system. However, this is a good time to look into the privacy problems that the original profile had from the use of these systems. A person should re-evaluate what programs, applications, and such they use as all of these systems tend to release information about the user.
The new profile may confuse new people trying to friend or follow the user. This means that the person looking for the user may find the other profile and they may try to find or follow that profile instead of the right profile. Therefore, a person should try to remove the other profile as soon as possible to make sure that that this does not continue to be an issue.
Finally, a user has to be wary that this profile fix will not fix an identity theft situation. This will only stop future attempts at stealing their identity. However, unfortunate this information is, it is true. A person needs to fix their identity theft situation with their financial institution. However, a person can limit attacks on their identity with a new profile and a plan to keep that profile as private as possible. Therefore, it might be a good idea to build a second profile that matches the first as soon as possible because that gives them a backup in case they make a mistake on the first profile.
Scott Buendia is a consultant for Bizbuilt.com. In addition, all the views and tactics in this article are tactics and ideas of the author; they do not necessarily represent the ideals, beliefs, or trademarks of Bizbuilt.com. Visit his card on Bizbuilt here.