Is Social Media Taking away your Privacy?

Some people falsely hope that online privacy on social media does not matter. Many people also think that all social media platforms are providing us with the best services when it comes to privacy. Some analysts also believe that If you do not desire your information leaking online, it is better not to put it on social media. Right?
No, it’s not the case. Holding your information secret is not your choice. Social media privacy concerns are growing as the social media platforms without knowing you are tracking most of the things you don’t even know. Sometimes the reason behind your privacy compromising is not just you or the app. It’s your friends as well.

Social Media Privacy Concerns

When someone joins any new social media app, the first thing the app ask you is to find friends. In order to make this finding step quick, the app offers you an option to import contacts from your phone or email address.
Well, by sharing your contact list, you have not done anything wrong. You have given your phone number and email to your friends and its fine. But in doing so, your social media network will get that information, and it will store it without asking you.

Social media’s ability to gather and save your personal information came into light with the Facebook bug scandal 2013. The bug shared the personal information of people on public forums even if the information was not public. Facebook has fixed that bug instantly, but it unveiled that from long facebook was collecting data from contact lists of their users innocently provided by their friends.

So one needs to understand that you can not control the privacy on your own. However, one can at least try to make it less viral.

3 ways to Protect your Privacy on Social Media Platform:

Hide your Activity Status:

On may social media app, your friends can see whether you are online, offline, or when you last used the app. You can hide it by going to privacy settings. As this is something private as well.

Disable read option:

Almost all the apps nowadays facilitate users to see if your friend has read your message or not. It’s better to turn it off for better results.

Limit your audience:

There are several methods with which you can limit your audience on social media networks. You can take benefit of utilising direct messages to select contacts instead of updating status for all your followers to see.