Social Networking and Data

Most of the social media websites are relies on user provided data and their personal information. Websites like Facebook, Linked, YouTube and others are widely uses their user's information to make their application user friendly and attract the users (Privacyrights.org, Posted: Jun 01 2010).

Image Courtesy : Forbes.com

What information users share with the social media networks?

There are a lot of information users provide when they initially register into the social media platforms. Social media platforms are using these data for various purposes. Social media platforms uses the profile information for identify other users with the same category or matched profiles. For example, Facebook, LinkedIn, are using those information to identify the mutual friends and users with the same taste. Users status can be used to communicate between friends/connected people. Users locations are helpful for situations like a public place or live updates. For example, in Facebook, users can able to add check in option using the live location.

In social media platforms, users can able to make it public and private. Most of the times, information stated above are public. Social media platforms can use the public data to help and make their applications user friendly.

Public, Private information & Privacy Policy

Users can make their data into public and private types. Public posts and information are globally available and private information are limited to certain groups. Private information and data can be change by the privacy policy created by the social media platforms. So that users should be care about the privacy policy while they create the account.

There are advertisements and third party applications in many social media platforms. Third party integration have different privacy policy than the social media platforms. Advertisements are using the public information to track the users on what kind of things they are interested and storing such public information to the associated websites.

Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, Image courtesy: https://www.cnbc.com/

We cannot say that it is an invasion towards the privacy of a user if social media platforms and others are use our public information since we provide the data as public and it is globally available. But if social media platforms takes the advantage of our private information without our permission then it is illegal in most of the countries. For example it is revealed in March 17, 2018 that "Facebook profiles were harvested for Cambridge Analytica in a major data scandal" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal, March 17, 2018).

Prevention and Laws

To prevent situations like data mining from the personal and private information, there are many laws in worldwide. Most of the countries have their own legal formalities associated with. In Canada, Office of the privacy commission of Canada provides various methods to prevent and handle private information in social media platforms. They suggest a lot of methods to stay safe in social media platforms, which can be see here: https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/privacy-topics/technology/online-privacy-tracking-cookies/online-privacy/social-media/02_05_d_74_sn/


References

1. https://privacyrights.org/consumer-guides/social-networking-privacy-how-be-safe-secure-and-social
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal
3. https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/privacy-topics/technology/online-privacy-tracking-cookies/online-privacy/social-media/02_05_d_74_sn/