Reddit is a platform that works similarly to a newspaper with one caveat: people using it can voice an opinion.
It’s a large website and only the 5th most visited.
Reddit is full of useful information for people of all ages.
Very simply, if there’s a subject you want to find an expert on, know more about, or just find people that are into what you are, Reddit is the perfect spot.
Is it safe?
Here are 10 reasons why it is.
Is Reddit Safe? (10 Reasons It Is)
1. Safe For Kids
When you think about internet safety, you automatically think about kids and their safety online.
Let’s address why Reddit is safe for kids.
Yes, Reddit is made for adults primarily, and as a parent, you must make online safety a partnership with whatever site your child may be on.
You know your child, so you’ll know whether you need to monitor their online use.
However, that doesn’t mean that Reddit doesn’t do its part.
Reddit does allow positive third-party intervention such as from a company called “Bark”.
It can do everything from monitoring your child’s screen time and comments to what they can interact with.
Apart from that, they don’t have anything in place specifically for kids.
However, if you refer to the next point on identity safety, you’ll be able to use an anonymous identity.
This way, anyone who comments or reaches out to the child won’t get any real information.
It’s not like Facebook or Google that make you put your identity and face.
2. Strict Safety Protocols
Concerning identity, Reddit is safer than any of the other popular social networks such as Facebook.
Facebook has parental controls and other privacy controls for adults, but you’re out there and you’ll be taken down if you don’t use your real name.
If you want your account back after that, you’ll have to upload your driver’s license and several other pieces of information.
Reddit doesn’t do that.
There is no requirement for you to reveal your identity.
Below is what Reddit actually collects on you:
- Username and Password. All you have to do here is make sure you don’t use your real name or any part of your name.
- You could give them an email, but you don’t have to.
- Your preferences and settings that you create by your interaction with the site.
- Posts and Comments.
- You may want to make sure you use discretion when messaging. Like most platforms, they do save all your messages between you and other users. It’s important to know that, even if you remove a message or delete your account, they will have those records. This includes modmail and chat.
- If you have any interactions with moderators or filed any reports, they will also be saved.
Why do they do this?
It’s actually for good reason.
Many people get annoyed with platforms for saving chats and messaging that are supposed to be private.
However, these are saved for the safety of those who use the platform.
If there are threats or harassing behavior made toward you, you’ll want to know that there’s proof.
This helps Reddit to investigate both parties and take appropriate action relative to the issue.
Other things are being saved as well such as hiding posts and comments, how you vote, friending, following, and who you block and when.
There are more sensitive things that they store for much the same reasons, including tech issue resolution.
That would be IP address, URLs that you visit, hardware settings, search history.
In case you were worried that your IP address would be used once you leave Reddit or long-term, they will delete IP addresses every 100 days.
It’s important to know that they use most of this information in a non-threatening way.
It’s used to suggest things that you would like based on the sum of all the information gathered.
3. Has An Age Limit
You don’t have to give an age on the app, but that does restrict your movements.
The good news is they do have a limit, and it’s there for a reason.
Reddit will ban children under 13, but again, it’s a partnership.
By the time Reddit or any other site figures out that there’s a child on board viewing things they shouldn’t, it could be too late.
This risk is not just on Reddit’s part; it’s on every platform.
Just have parental controls on your personal device that will restrict their use everywhere.
4. Will Monitor Your Account For Security Breaches
Reddit has security teams that monitor all angles of their users’ accounts.
One way is to monitor trends in activity and then compare them to possible threats.
Once something raises a red flag, they can take the necessary action.
Those actions can be as simple as issuing a warning to the user, shutting down an account altogether, or removing a posted comment, post, or response.
It happens when links are involved or some kind of odd communication.
5. You Can Easily Monitor Your Account
On the topic of hacking and security, you can take some low-tech, yet effective steps to monitor your account.
Sign in to your Reddit account and go to account settings.
From there, you can check your logins by IP address.
If you see an IP address that isn’t yours or any computer you’ve been on, you can take care of it immediately.
Change your password straight away and make sure the email addresses you’ve provided are ones you recognize.
We do have one important note on IP addresses.
They register by geolocation.
That means the beat can go off because it’s not perfect.
You may get to another town or state or see something odd and it might still be you.
In this case, take the measures we listed and get some help from Reddit.
6. Has A Strict Process If Your Account Is Hacked
If your Reddit account has been hacked or they believe that it’s been used in a way that goes against their terms of use, the account will be locked, prompting the account owner to change the password immediately.
In this case, you may also want to change the emails you gave them.
We find it helpful for any social site that you create an email that you only use for social sites.
If the account is found to have been used in an illegal or threatening manner to anyone, including compromising Reddit’s integrity, it will be shut down permanently.
This happens when they can’t establish ownership of an account, which means someone has created a fake account and used it for nefarious purposes much as they do on Facebook and others.
7. Has Two-Factor Authentication
The two-factor authentication should bring you a sense of safety on Reddit.
It’s a common security practice on any site that is considered safe.
It’s not always required, but if you are concerned about safety, you should do it.
With two-factor authentication, you’ll need to use an authentication code to log in.
You get this by having to click on a link you’ll get on your phone, or you have to go to your email to get a code.
Sometimes, you can download a code generator and link it to a site.
Facebook has its own code generator.
We strongly suggest you do this on every site.
8. Keeps Your Account Safe
When your partnership with Reddit is strong, you could enjoy the site for many years.
There is a responsibility that each user must take to do regular checks and updates and report any security issues immediately.
You can follow the steps outlined in this article to keep your account safe.
One of the most important points is always changing passwords.
That’s a common one, but there are others that are just as important.
- Look for signs regularly that point to something odd going on. Don’t second guess yourself, but address the situation with Reddit if you don’t know what to do. What are some signs of something awry on your account? Common sense and intuition will tell you if something is wrong, and you can help to stop it by reporting it right away.
Maybe you get a message that seems strange like someone you don’t know is contacting you in the chat directly after you commented or upvoted, and they seem a bit too forward.
Are they baiting you by asking you inappropriate questions?
Are they telling you they have the answer to a particular issue regarding your comment and the subject of a post?
There are hundreds of examples.
It depends on the unique circumstance that made you a target. It’s probably nothing you’re doing wrong, though.
These people are professionals and know exactly what they’re looking for.
Just stay vigilant, and when in doubt, report it.
- Use emails that are permanent. You can link your email addresses on the new Reddit on the preferences page, and if you are on the old Reddit, you can do this on the settings page. Many people use emails that they deem to be junk emails. They use them just for social accounts and subscriptions. We suggested that you use it only for social accounts. However, you need to have access to it and check it regularly in order to stay secure on any site, including Reddit.
- Don’t sign in regularly on any public computer. We suggest you don’t do any social media activity on a public or shared computer. There are too many eyes on that database, and you don’t know what information they’re collecting. These are libraries, schools, workplaces, computer cafes, and coworking spaces. Use social media platforms and sites like Reddit that you would use mostly for entertainment on your own laptop or tablet or phone. There is an app now for Android and IOS that can be used safely.
9. Powerful Things Going On Behind The Scenes
Many things were traded off or created in the interest of a better, safer user experience on Reddit.
They are great at looking at and taking swift action based on the feedback of moderators over the years.
They decided to make more of an investment based on the feedback from several departments, all of which enhance the safety and user experience on the user end and the Reddit employee end.
The first thing is the moderator experience.
According to the moderator feedback, there was a small overhaul needed in this department.
Moderators are the people who catch the issues as they come up and take care of them within the scope of their authority and report what they can’t deal with to the appropriate department.
This goes on behind the scenes and makes the user experience much more enjoyable.
Moderators can now see when other moderators are typing an answer to a user’s question.
This seems like a small thing, but anything that speeds up the process of resolving a user issue will keep the platform safer.
The quicker and more organized a response you can make, the better.
We’ve all had frustrations when we report an issue to a moderator and it either takes ages to get a response or you are forced to repeat your situation to yet another moderator.
The moderators are now getting customized push notifications that are more tailored to the size of the group they are running.
10. Has Upgraded Their Ability To Catch Recent Spam Attacks
According to the latest Reddit Safety & Security report, they have been battling a persistent spammer.
That doesn’t mean that it’s only one person. You can’t tell and when it’s this intense, there are likely more than one.
The good news is their strategy and a change in their strategies were detected and the accounts were shut down to the tune of 1,505,237 in a period of six months.
Only 79,434 of that number were actually reported by users.
What does that mean?
Users don’t know the account perpetrating the cybercrimes because they are cloaking the links by embedding links in the texts along with other higher-tech ways.
There’s a two-fold process that they’re swiftly working on now which is quite impressive for a site like this with thousands of messages being sent every minute.
They’ve improved the process to catch these accounts and ban them.
However, according to Reddit, in this report, they state that it can take a few hours to complete the process once a bad account is detected.
That window of time will naturally allow tons of these messages to flow through.
They apologize for that which is still happening in that window of time, but it seems they are working tirelessly to close the gap in that window so that the accounts can be closed quicker.
There are a host of important things that are also changing.
The password length has been changed from a minimum of six to eight characters in length.
The username is not to be used in a password, so the system will stop you from using your username in the password.
They’ve also created what they call no-go words that you cannot use in a password.
Those words are easy to guess.
If you have an existing account, your password will not be affected.
If you create a new account, however, it will be rejected if you don’t comply with the new rules after June 2, 2021.
In conclusion, Reddit is as safe as any other site on the internet.
They have had their problems in the past and will continue to have them as much as any other online forum.
However, in the past two years, they’ve carried out many new ways to speed up the process of catching and closing rogue, disruptive accounts.
The reality online is that there will always be better and stronger ways to combat any form of hacking, but we need to understand that the hacker makes cyber invasion their career.
This means, as we stated at the beginning, that it takes a partnership to stay safe.
Any worthy platform will always be transparent as Reddit has been, in asking their users to do all they can in the scope of their policies to make sure the platform is a safe space for all.
Changing passwords, checking email, and using common sense in who you give your information to goes a long way.
Reddit doesn’t enforce any rule to use your identity like Facebook and other platforms do.
This is a great freedom, and it should be appreciated by doing your due diligence online.
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