<b>Digital Footprints and Kidnapping Risk: Online Safety for Nigerians in a Context of Insecurity</b>

This preprint explores how ordinary online habits in Nigeria, such as posting family photos, using mobile banking, and chatting in groups, can unintentionally put people at risk of kidnapping and digital fraud. It combines public data, frontline security experience, and international studies to show how criminals read our digital footprints as carefully as tracks in the sand. The paper looks at law and professional responsibility but also at the human side: parents who overshare children’s lives, elders who rely on others to “help” with phones, and families overwhelmed by rumours and panic in group chats. It then offers simple, low-cost steps that individuals, households and organisations can take to stay safer online. Rather than treating cybersecurity as a technical issue for experts, the preprint argues that careful digital behaviour is now part of how Nigerians protect themselves, their loved ones and their communities in an age of insecurity.