Social media appears to be the favorite time pass of most of the people on the Internet but it has raised privacy concerns too. The basic question is that are you risking your privacy when you use social media? The simple answer is “YES.” But how? When you put something online then you know it is not in your hands to control it. The information will be stored somewhere on the servers and those servers can be hacked and your information can be used against you. The recent “Sony Playstation” incident is a clear example of that.
The worst thing is that not a lot of people are aware of the technology. The fascinating and fancy “share” and “like” icons appearing on every website and device these days tempt the people to speak and share with their networks. Think of a simple GPS device like Tom Tom which saves your over speeding information and hands it over to the authorities. The facial recognition through your social media profiles then leads you to trouble. Now you may be thinking of dumping your TomTom device and use your iPhone as a GPS device then you should know that iPhone unwillingly stores your personal information and it is easy to trace the person through iPhone as well.
The problem gets worse when it comes to social media websites like Facebook. When someone tags you in a picture without your permission, the information is shared on the Internet in an instant and if you Google your name, you will find all those unwanted pictures on Google associated with your name.
In a nutshell, when you use social media, you give up your right of privacy willingly. The young generation of today is not really concerned about the personal information and nobody can hold it back. But be careful about what you share online because anything related to you floating on the Internet may backfire sooner or later.
About Usman
Whoa. I didn’t know that the tagged photos of you will be searchable on Google. If only me can see those tagged photos of mine will it still be searchable?
I, too, am aware that almost all kinds of securities can be hackable. But on Sony’s case, I don’t think Facebook will experience the same (but we’ll never know). Well, the good thing is we do not store our credit card info on Facebook (as I know, I’m not sure on some games but I think they’re not related to Facebook, or are they?).
You haven’t mentioned the MySpace teenage tragedy (as what I call it) when teenage girls post their info and got cyberbullied and had real life stalkers because of lack of precautions. I also do believe parents or the guardians have some responsibilities on that.
I don’t believe, though, that you fully give up your privacy when you use social media. It’s like telling the online shops by which you’ve entered your credit card info that they have the right to use that info on their advantage. That’s why most sites have Privacy Policies. Well, that’s my view point.
But people really need to be cautious on choosing sites which they could trust. I just want to share my experience with Friendster, if you know that social networking site. It had been famous on our country three years ago, much like what is Facebook is today. But I’ve long abandoned it and migrated to Facebook. And so I made my profile ‘private’.
I recently Googled my name, and found my Friendster profile on the third search result. When I clicked it, I can fully view my profile (though I’m not logged in). But I made it private!
I looked at the URL and it had the member ID instead of the username. When I typed the URL with my username (friendster.com/gianfaye), I then saw it was private.
See, there is a security hole on that. Even though I’m not logged in I can see me info (which others could see, too). Lesson: We should carefully look into sites that we should trust.
Sorry for the long comment, though. Good article.
Great comment! This is exactly my point, people are obsessed with social media these days. I too do not save my credit card info online but I guess some people do who play games like “Farmville” or “Cityville” a lot. Facebook has another problem I think. You can deactivate your profile but cannot delete it. When you try to use some app on Facebook, it asks to access for your permission to use your info else you cannot use that app. Now our information is deliberately shared with third parties and we ourselves let it happen.