Social media has presented different platforms where families and friends can connect despite other geographical locations. Social media users relate to various platforms using their devices and share moments or ideas in economics, politics, or even business. Although social media has made the world a smaller place, it has fallbacks. This paper will look at how social media has hugely caused a lack of privacy.
Social media users tend to post issues concerning their private lives or public matters. For years now, social media privacy has been an issue. There are numerous reports about data breaches, causing social media users to be more cautious about their privacy. The data breaches have led to a lack of trust and raised suspicions among the users whether they have lost control over their information.
The number of social media users is rising, making them vulnerable to different forms of security breaches. When private information gets unauthorized, the impacts can be grave. According to Pew Research center (2017), about 13% of online users in the U.S. have reported their accounts hacked by unauthorized users. These hacks can cause redirects and malware of various types, which would cause vulnerability to evil deeds.
Sharing private information may cause judgments by the public. Social media users can ruin or build their reputations, depending on their activities on these platforms. They can do this through their relationships and influence from other people using similar platforms. Therefore, some people can be subject to unfair judgments or misunderstandings resulting from a small portion of one’s story (Rahman et al., 2019).
The different types of social media threats include phishing, data mining, and malware. Phishing is among the most common ways criminals gather private information from social media users. Phishing attacks come in calls, emails, or text messages from a legitimate institution. The statements or calls may trick users into sharing sensitive and private information like passwords or bank information.
Data mining is extracting helpful information from a large data set. Online users open new social media accounts almost every day, meaning that every social media user leaves a stream of data. Social media platforms require personal information such as name, date of birth, personal interests, or location (Rahman et al., 2019). Similarly, different firms use the information to obtain data based on how, where, and when users are active on their platforms. The data obtained will enable companies to understand their target markets and improve their advertising methods. It can be worse as firms may share the data with third parties without the users’ knowledge. Finally, malware is suspicious software designed to attack computers and gain information that they contain. If malware is successfully installed in a user’s computer, then all the information and data can be stolen (Rahman et al., 2019). Social media platforms are potential delivery systems for various malware. Compromising one account can spread the malware to friends and contacts by taking charge of the account.
To conclude, social media privacy continues to be in question as different forms of hacking and data breaches are introduced. The youths and young people are the most vulnerable to such insecurities as they never take the matter seriously. Also, these youngsters are more influenced by their peers than adults or parents, hence exposing them to insecurities. Social media users are urged to avoid sharing sensitive information or conceal information that they do not feel comfortable sharing.
References
Americans and Cyber Security. (2017, January 16). Pew Research Center.
Rahman, H. U., Rehman, A. U., Nazir, S., Rehman, I. U., & Uddin, N. (2019, March). Privacy and security—limits of personal information to minimize loss of privacy. In Future of Information and Communication Conference (pp. 964-974). Springer, Cham.
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