Cybersecurity Challenges in Social Media Erdal Ozkaya

1.4
 
Motivation 
1.4.1
 
Problem statement 
To investigate the privacy issues and impacts that social media users are facing and 
how to mitigate them. 
Social media platforms have brought about deeply troubling privacy concerns to the 
users. Private user data is, first of all, being collected, stored, and sold off to third parties or 
being used for other purposes than what the user wished from the owners of these platforms. 
Social media platforms have been accused of gathering data that a user has provided in 
his/her account, and data in posts and messages and even photos and videos, solely for 
advertising purposes. Users are being forced to accept flawed terms and conditions that give 
rights to the social media companies to use their data in whatever ways they please. It is so 
hurting for the users to openly see their personal data being paraded for other companies to 
either buy or use for advertising purposes. Users have been tricked into giving out the 
ownership of their data, and all this trickery has been done to basically enable the social 
media companies to have the right advert to shove in a user’s face when on that platform. 
Social media is becoming filthy; it is no longer about supporting users to get the best 
experience as they interact with each other; rather, it has now become all about making 
money out of them. There is a lot of money in digital marketing, and many companies are 
rushing to milk that cash cow before it runs dry. The best place to find ready data from the 
public without having to search much is, of course, the social media, and companies are 
making up to the last dime out of their users. 
There is also another group targeting the personal user information. This group is 
comprised of attackers and governments. As for attackers, these include scammers, 
spammers, hackers, and social engineers. Some of them keep continually stalking users on 
their various social media accounts and recording their every move, post, and information 

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5 
that they have shared publicly. It is easier for social engineers to find lots of details about 
users on social media platforms than anywhere else. They use this data to trick users into 
believing that they are legitimate people in banks, government, or institutions. Innocent users 
suffer at the hands of these attackers only because social media platforms want to keep the 
user data naked for all to see. Some governments have also been accused of actively spying 
on citizens over social media platforms. They are said to coerce the platforms to give out 
private user data, such as messages. They are also said to have their elite team of hackers that 
breaches into user accounts on a need-to-know basis. They do this in the name of protecting 
citizens from acts of terrorism. 
Many other issues can be talked about but it is clear that there is a burning need for 
protecting user privacy on social media. A lot has been said and many threats have been 
issued, yet very few actions have been taken. It is therefore necessary for a comprehensive 
research to be done to unearth all these privacy and security issues that users are facing on 
social media. Finding these issues will allow for substantive mitigations to be suggested. The 
recommended mitigations will mostly help the users, the social media companies and, finally, 
the governments.