Cybersecurity Challenges in Social Media Erdal Ozkaya

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An Overview of privacy issues in social media 
The list of privacy and security issues on social media seemingly continues to grow. 
The outright harvest of personal data on these platforms by combined efforts of hackers and 
social media companies has increased the security concerns. Hackers are on these platforms 
looking for any information that they can use to attack a user. Hackers want to get 
information such as birth dates, pet names, banks names, account numbers, and other 
personal information that can be used to attack the users. They also look for information that 
can be used to answer secret questions that a user has set up on his or her accounts. For 
example, if one has set up a secret question asking for a pet name and if the hackers can get 
this information from his/her social media account, the attack will be successful.
On the other hand of oppression, social media users are having to contend with their 
personal information being sold to third parties or being accessed for advertising purposes by 
their social media platforms. They are doing this using shoddy means to avoid consequences. 
Some of these social media companies such as Facebook have been charged in court and 
found guilty of violations of user privacy. The EU, one of the most active organizations when 
it comes to digital rights of its citizens, has severally sent stern warnings to Facebook and the 
likes on the issue of user privacy (Tannam, 2018). However, most social media companies 
have remained adamant that they are acting within the law. They all make users sign away 
their privacy when they are joining the platforms. Therefore, an end is not in sight for the 
data collection activities by the social media platforms. Together with hackers, they have 
made it riskier for the users to share their private information on any social media platform. 

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