Humans are social animals; they love to socialize in every manner possible. And with the advent of social media platforms, the global communication gaps are reduced substantially. Nowadays, we have a social media platform for almost everything possible. We have a general socializing platform such as Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn for professionals and job seekers, Instagram for sharing pictures, Tinder for dating, and the list can go on. With so many giants you can secure social network platforms in the game and billions of users sharing their private data with them, the main concern in today’s time is privacy.
Privacy of the user and how to secure their confidential data is the biggest concern for every social media platform. For example, in April 2021, the data of 533 million Facebook users was leaked. However, a Facebook spokesperson said that it was due to a vulnerability patched by the company in 2019. But to be called a Secure Social Network, there are many things to be concerned about, mitigating various types of risks. Some of them are:
Unattended and imposters account
There are many accounts that people tend to forget about and leave unattended; such unmonitored accounts are easily used by hackers and perform illegal deeds.
Imposters can easily create accounts under different names and make them look like genuine company or person accounts. Facebook also mentioned that about 5% of active users per month are generally fake. This problem is dealt with by the verification process of the social media account.
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Phishing attacks
Phishing has now become a common practice among cybercriminals. With fake emails, false advertisements, and promotions, they fraud people. Some common phishing frauds are spear phishing, CEO fraud, link manipulation, and phishing email.
Third-Party Applications
Third-Party Applications carry a lot of vulnerability which the hackers use to their advantage to hack into accounts and leak or misuse the personal data of users of social media platforms. However, we can treat these vulnerabilities with appropriate patches or timely updates.
Building user trust
Users of social media platforms are their real assets so building their trust is one of the most critical tasks in the hands of developers. An article printed by emarketer.com projected a survey that shows only 19% of US internet users trust Facebook with their private data. Social media platforms have to build such features, apply such strategies, implement such privacy settings that make the users feel safe and comfortable.
In the present time, creating a social media platform is a straightforward process, whether done individually or with the help of tools like WordPress. The main problem lies with the safety of users from different threats that can make a website vulnerable and prone to various cyber-attacks. If you are trying to create your own community or a social media platform, here are some tips:
Creating social media policies and strategies
For creating a secure social network atmosphere for the users, the implementation of a social media policy is a must for every social media platform. To develop a proper set of guidelines that will suit your social media platform best, you should work extensively to create various strategies and implement the best from them. These policies will also act as a guideline for the users.
Setting up of monitoring tools
Several monitoring tools can be set up to act as an early warning system. You can use these tools to monitor and track user actions, inappropriate content, imposters account, inactive account, security breach, and data leak, etc.
Regular security audits
Security audits should be performed regularly, and the privacy policies and settings should be updated accordingly.
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Monitoring Employees
Employees are the most trusted assets, and sometimes they breach trust and leak the data. So, there should be a proper assignment of duties and responsibilities of the employees. Adequate monitoring of employees should be done, and a proper contract must exist between you and your employee.
Creating a social media website or an online community from scratch is itself a long-term project, but thanks to WordPress and its different community themes, creating your own social media website and network is just a few clicks away. The procedure of creating a social media website or a community website becomes very easy and secure with WordPress using themes like BuddyX.
The BuddyX theme, which is supported by the BuddyPress community theme, will help you create a social media network of your own and help you make it more secure by providing different services and additional plugins.
The BuddyX theme, with its different plugins like BuddyPress Profile Pro, BuddyPress Moderation Pro, BuddyPress Private Community Pro, and many more, can provide many layers of security and monitoring for your social media websites.
BuddyPress Profile Pro
One of BuddyPress Profile Pro’s features is that it provides the ability to extend BuddyPress profiles with fields and groups of repeaters. In addition to that, users can easily hide or unhide their profiles, i.e., it is up to the members of your social media group whether they want to make their profile public or not.
BuddyPress Moderation Pro
BuddyPress Moderation Pro limits your members from taking undesirable actions. All the new activities will go under moderation and be displayed only after proper approval from the moderators. In addition, site admins will have the power to deactivate a users’ account or hide a blocked member from the users’ directory page. These are only a few of the long list of features showcase of BuddyPress Moderation Pro plugin…
BuddyPress Private Community Pro
BuddyPress Private Community Pro limits the BuddyPress community features for the logout users, asking users to log in to see the complete profile. It also shows a profile progression bar and has many other features such as deleting or adding admin to social media websites and many more.
BuddyPress Profanity Pro
This BuddyPress addon helps to add a list of words to filter. You can also enable the content filter for activities, messaging, chats, and comments. These are some of the main features of this BuddyPress additional add-ons.
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All BuddyPress addons can be easily integrated with a BuddyPress compatible theme like BuddyX or Reign BuddyPress.
Pricing
All these add-ons can be easily integrated with the BuddyX theme at the request of their customers to provide the best features available for the security and satisfaction of clients. Therefore, the prices for each additional plugin are straightforward:
- Single license for $39/year
- Developer license $99/year
Conclusion on Secure Social Network
Now you can build your community and social media platform with ease and security with the help of the best community theme BuddyX which is compatible with BuddyPress, MemberPress, and several other plugins designed just for your social media website. You have to focus on your community and leave the security part to BuddyX and some plugins which help in securing a website.
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