Social Media Knows You Better Than You Think

Internet privacy is a big hot topic being discussed in recent months. In the wake of the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal involving Facebook user data, more people than ever before are concerned about what information about them is online and who can access it.

This has led me to analyze what data I was sharing and how I might be able to regulate it. The first thing I did was log on to my Facebook account to view my own privacy settings. I was shocked at what I discovered.

Under “Privacy” in the settings menu on Facebook, there are two sections for privacy settings: “Your activity” and “How people find and contact you”. What was so shocking to me was that every one of the settings for how I could be found or contacted was listed under “Everyone”. This meant that anyone could find me based on my name, email, or phone number. There was even a setting for outside search engines to connect to my Facebook account; meaning that a quick Google search could land anyone right to my account.

Once on my account anyone had access to view my friends list or personal info. I could also be tagged (virtually linked) to anything anyone wanted me to be, good or bad, without me knowing. All of these setting I have now since changed.

I wanted to know what other data Facebook could have about me. According to their Data Policy they collect data from and about what we view, what we like, the pages we visit, the content we view and share; the list goes on. In essence, anything that we say or do on the site can be turned into usable data that is shared or sold to other Facebook platforms, advertisers, analytics companies, or other third party partners.

However, all this comes from one site alone. Many of us in this day and age use and have our personal information on more than one website. I headed over to Twitter to see what their privacy policies looked like.

Many of the same kinds of features and setting were available for me to customize the amount privacy I got with Twitter. According to their Privacy Policy, they collect many of the same kinds of data as Facebook does, however, they offer many more ways to opt out certain collections. It also appears that they shear less data with outside sources and what they do shear is non personal and more general information.

Better yet still is Snapchat. They have privacy setting for almost everything; to the point where only the people you approve of can view every individual thing.

In this age of social networking and being constantly connected, it is more important than ever before to be aware of what people can get a hold of your information. Privacy settings exist so that we can utilize them and take back some of the control. However, maybe the best way to not give up our personal data is to limit the number of sites we use, if at all.