In this world of modernization, Social media is considered as one of the important and powerful methods to interact and communicate with one another. We frequently login to our social media accounts to add connections and make more friends, but how many of us actually think of the security and safety of the information we are sharing?
Although, you have already read all the privacy policies of each social media site or have a basic understanding of its important elements, but do you know about the loopholes that are integrated into these privacy policies, which place your personal information at risk? Knowing about the flaws of social media policies is an important factor in digital security.
Know about the social media sites that share your personal information with third parties –
If we consider all the major social networking sites, then as per the report of CATSMI project, there are only two sites that do not share our personal information with third parties whether it is an advertiser or a partner and those are Google and Foursquare. That’s it.
Now, you must be wondering, what about other social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest etc? What type of information do they share and with whom?
Well, Twitter itself states that it has the right to transfer or to sale all of its user information to its advertisers, developers or partners during a merger, sale, bankruptcy or an acquisition of the company. Facebook also states that it will share the personal information of its users with advertisers, developers or partners. What does it mean for you? It means, the one who wants to develop an application, advertise or partner with Facebook, can have access to the personal information of its users. And, same as with Pinterest!
Obviously, we don’t need to look out further for other sites!
What about those privacy control settings?
If you are well aware of the more advanced features of privacy settings of these social networking sites, then you may think that your personal information is completely protected. Well, sadly, nothing is like that! This extra feature protects your information from being accessed by other people. They provide no restraints and controls for third parties.
How to protect your personal information?
- The very first step to protect and secure your personal information is to stop using your full name as your profile name. Instead of using the full name, use your first and middle name
- The next step is to create a secondary email account and use it as a spam email account. Make this email address as your primary email address in your profile.
- Third one is to use a VPN Software i.e.; Virtual Private Network. Because by using this technology, you can easily hide your all the personal details, your computer’s IP address, the name of the websites you visit and much more from hackers, companies and even ISP’s.