During the month of October 2022, Facebook officially revealed that around 1 million Facebook users’ data or login credentials were breached.
Soon after that the users were informed to change their password immediately. This was not first instinct the renowned social media platform security was breached.
In the past during 2018, hackers breached and entered Facebook premises which affected approximately 30 million Facebook users.
It is not only about Facebook many other social media platforms have sallow bitter taste of data breach or being getting hacked. Instagram, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, and many more social media platforms are being targeted or faced the consequence.
So, question over here is are social media platforms are safe havens for hackers? Is user data being secure on social media? And importantly how users can safeguard their data privacy on social media if it is not safe?
To be honest on answering – Social media data privacy is not at all safe. The social media platform can get hacked anytime.
In fact, 11% of social media user deleted their account due to security concerns and 1/3rd of American adults do not trust social media when it comes to data protection.
Moving to next concerned about how to safeguard users’ data on social media we need to discuss important aspects of this article it will help you understand core of this subject.
What is Social Media and Data Privacy?
Social media is digital platform where users can share, connect, and communicate with their friends and families digitally. Users can stay in touch via video calling, audio calling, and through messaging.
Moreover, social media also provide or offer platform to share your photos, videos, thoughts, data, audio, and files with your connection within few clicks.
Data privacy, on the other hand, is the safeguarding of personal information where only the user has access to or control over it or to the person to whom the individual has granted access and permission to use it.
In social media world data privacy include username, password, email address, messages, photos, videos, and files.
What happens if your social media is compromised then? How will you protect the information on your account that records conversations between your family, friends, and close friends? How will you safeguard the private images, movies, and data that you don’t want the world to see? – The bad news is that while utilizing social media, you run the whole danger of losing your privacy. Your data has a significant likelihood of getting into the wrong hands.
The good news is that there are various hacks to lessen your risk of having your account compromised.
How Can You Safeguard Your Data Privacy in Social Media?
Take precise look at terms and conditions of the sites:
When you register for a social media account, pay close attention to the information you are committing to sharing. As you are aware of not sharing your bank details with any one around you how can you be ready to share your personal information to unknown sites?
Hence it is important for user to have a deep understanding of what yo are committing to the social media site.
Some of the circumstances could be too uncomfortable for you. For instance, some free websites may collect and sell information about what you browse for marketing purposes to third parties. Ensure that the permissions you choose are appropriate for you.
Delete the Account that is Abandoned
We all know how to make multiple account using different email ids on social media. Hence, there are many instincts where you might make account many years ago and you abandoned it as it was no longer useful to you.
However, will creating your abandoned account there are chances you might have shared your critical information as well as personal information.
Moreover, you might have some important and critical data or information available in that abandoned account and you forget about it. So, in case in your account might get attacked or hijacked by the hackers your personal information will get breached.
There are also some cases happened where a group of hackers only attack the account which are not in use since long time or abandoned by the user.
Because the user whose account is hacked have very less chance to get know about that this account is hack and sometime hackers get useful more information from abandon account than the active account.
Hence, it is important to delete or deactivate the account which not longer in use from end.
Be Careful while Sharing photos, videos, and personal details on social media
It become very much critical and important to think twice while sharing your photos on social media. Your account may get hacked anytime and in case if you have shared photos videos that are private may have chance that it can go in other hands.
Similarly, while creating your social media account, it is important not to share your personal information like full name, address, and profile photo.
Think twice not twice, think thrice before sharing any personal information on social media because you don’t have complete control over your own account.
Always Keep your account logged out
Always keep your account logged out when you are done with your surfing. Sometimes users keep the settings on for “keep me logged in” in their personal computer. However, it is risky to do that. If in case your personal computer gets set with virus and got hacked, you might have to lose your social media account along with your computer data.
Final thoughts
There are many other numerous techniques and hacks that you must follow but we have discussed the basic hacks that you should follow without fail.
Nevertheless, as per the rule social media gain the rights of your data and if in case your account gets hacked you might not be able to do anytime legal on the social media sites.
However, social media sites are liable not to use your personal information or sell your personal information to anyone but due to data privacy breach social media have failed to protect your data.
Security and data privacy is the area where social media should look at it in depth and opt for powerful cloud managed services which provide social media platform the extra protection.
The cloud services from Azure nowadays are one of the most secured technologies with assure your data is fully protected with fully Azure managed services.
Privacy on social media is not safe but making it safe will attract more users and thrive their business to next level.
Writer Bio
Austin. H. Joy is an Enthusiastic Sr. IT Consultant at?Bitscape is leading Power Apps Consultants. He loves to write and read about latest Microsoft tech trends. He likes to travel to natural places.
