4 ways to protect yourself from online harassment from coworkers

On Behalf of | Dec 7, 2022 | Workplace Discrimination

Many people face unlawful harassment at work for a variety of reasons: age, race, disability, gender or sexual orientation. While harassment is often confined to work hours, some harassers feel the need to follow their colleagues wherever they go, like social media.

Facebook, Instagram and other social platforms have many benefits. You can connect with friends, sharing videos and keep up with the latest news. But, such activity has downsides; some users are subjected to harassment.

But there are ways to protect yourself, such as the following.

Hide your social media accounts

One of the easiest ways to protect yourself from harassers is to set any social media sites to private or hidden (depending on the site’s privacy policies). By obscuring your account from plain view, harassers are stopped from gaining access to your private life, commenting on your posts or harassing you through direct messages.

Change your privacy settings

Changing your privacy settings can act much the same as setting your account to private, but it still allows your friends to still easily find your account.

If you still wish to remain public, some sites allow users to limit who can make comments or message them while still being public.

Block users

Harassers can go to great lengths to abuse and harass those around them. Some users may create multiple accounts to unsuspectedly access your account page. When this happens, and the harasser reveals their motives, it may be best to block them, restricting any further actions on their part.

Report any harassment

When all else fails, online harassment leaves behind a clear trail back to the harasser. Their actions often leave behind evidence that they’re violating employment laws, which may be helpful when filing a workplace harassment claim.

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