We all deserve to have some degree of privacy whilst living our online life. And pertaining to its addictive nature, we can’t stop using social media. Considering an overwhelming number of privacy loopholes and concerns, it’s hard to ensure if your privacy on social media is intact or not. Therefore, how do we do to make sure our privacy is not compromised!
Social media is now more to us than just entertainment. It is playing a significant role in so many things. It serves as a platform to address so many social issues, allows us to find like-minded people, and discover new talent. Through it, we stay updated about what’s going on in our friends’ and loved ones’ lives, and the list goes on. For my family, our subscription to Charter Internet packages is solely for staying updated with social media!
With some significant insight into privacy issues, you can keep those at bay. Let’s give you some essential dose of caution along with some enlightenment about prevalent privacy concerns.
Hacking and Impersonation
Social networks are the favorite targets for hackers, spammers, and other cybercriminals. An account with compromised privacy is an easy and appealing target. Thy can easily impersonate you once they get hold of your Twitter or Facebook account.
Their interest in social media accounts is because they can effectively spread viruses, scams, and malware using them. Their range of spamming and scamming is much more than conventions email spams. People are more likely to click links sent by their friends than unknown ones. And this can lead to having their computers infected. If you are in the habit of providing lots of personal info on these forums, you are vulnerable to identity thefts too.
Harassment, Trolling, and Stalking
It doesn’t have to be a stranger always to hurt you on social media. Some people are just not so friendly as you think they would be. Cyberbullying, trolling, stalking, and harassment are some of the well-known threats in the social media arena. Perpetrating them is easier on social media than in reality.
Many such cases are reported. The guilty turned out to be ex-boyfriends, girlfriends, jealous buddies, random people who don’t understand the concept of having a “different opinion” on social issues, and so on. These people can be rude, abusive, snub you for having a distinct opinion, and can even target and badmouth you.
Untrustworthy Apps
Using third-party apps on social media seems to be a harmless act. From scheduling apps to different games, they seem fun and innocent. However, once you permit sharing your profile info with them, they sync with your social media account and sometimes procure more info than it mentioned before syncing.
Miners and hackers use these apps to access your personal info. The data miners can analyze and repackage all such info and then sell it to advertisers. In addition to accessing your sensitive data, you can be exposed to malware too whilst using these apps.
Privacy Intrusion in the Name of Effective Marketing
Social media networks are trying to adapt, but still, there are conflicts of interest between their users and paid advertising customers.
There have been increased attempts of info gathering as well as privacy intrusion in the name of “targeted audience” and “targeted marketing.”
The Downside to Location-Based Services
Smartphones have become the prime devices when it comes to using social media. Many added services have been added to smartphones, which were not available in traditional computers. One instance is GPS and location-based services. Despite their benefits, they also pose serious security and privacy threats for the user.
Your smartphones collect location data frequently and social media apps turn out to be the heaviest users of location-based data. For instance, if you have subscribed to Spectrum Channel Lineup, social media apps and even search engines are able to figure out the Indiana IP addresses. The algorithms have also become smart and somewhat threatening.
Quick Tips about Privacy Protection
So, here are some effective tips and suggestions to protect your privacy on social networking sites.
- Make some effort to create hardy and strong passwords, which are unpredictable and hard to guess.
- Don’t use the same password for multiple accounts.
- Avoid using social media on public tech gadgets and devices. Log out if you really have to use a public device.
- Disable the access to all the geolocation data on your social media apps.
- Don’t click any links sent by friends on social media. They can be hacked.
- Consider using two-factor authentication.
- Keep your personal info to the bare minimum on social media profiles.
Stay safe!
