Cybersecurity Challenges in Social Media Erdal Ozkaya
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| Figure 6: Ranking of social media platforms by respondents
Users were asked about the social networks that had the most privacy issues; of course, Facebook came leading the pack. This platform has been outed already; users know the dirty things that are happening in the back. They are aware that their privacy has been sold off to third parties and advertisers; they are aware that this is a platform that has transformed to be hostile to its users. Facebook spoiled its own platform the moment it decided to make money over advancing the platform as a social place for people to meet and connect. This is why it has been dragged to court several times over gross violations of user privacy. LinkedIn was selected to be the second platform with privacy issues. This is because users do not have the full trust on LinkedIn. Once it is given access to one's email, it is said to be collecting a lot of information, more than the contacts it says that it is discovering. The platform has also been accused of automatically sending connection invitations at times without a user’s consent. It is also accused of being big mouthed in that; it keeps disclosing a lot of information to users. It keeps alerting the user’s connections whenever one makes even 2 1 3 4 5 6 Google Plus Snapchat Most favorite social media platform 110 a subtle change to his/her profile. Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat were said to have the least privacy issues. This is mostly because Twitter is disciplined when it comes to advertising, it has not been accused of reading chats or third parties access a user’s private information. A few years back, however, hackers were able to break into the platform and access a lot of private data and this is why users ranked it third on the list of platforms with privacy issues. Figure 7: Ranking of social media platforms according to privacy issues Concerning privacy issues, 99% believed that they faced a type of privacy issue on social media platforms. 80% said that they had been stalked on social media. This is a common threat facing users, stalking and especially girls and prominent people. Stalkers may have weird obsessions with someone or may be gathering a lot of user’s information in preparation for a big attack. That is how social engineers do it; they nest around social media platforms and collect the little details that users post about themselves or their families online. Only 20% of the respondents did not feel that they had been stalked by someone on social media. When asked about being bullied on these platforms, 30% confirmed to have been cyberbullied. Cyberbullying is whereby a user is harshly criticized, verbally abused, and Snapchat Ranking of platforms acording to privacy issues 111 threatened by other social media users (Bonanno and Hymel, 2013). It happens when one makes a certain comment and is seen to behave in a certain way that displeases many people. In other times, it happens because some people have so much anger in them that they feel like discharging at anyone who slightly annoys them. Cyberbullying is a major threat in social media as the verbal attacks do more psychological damage and have even brought about suicidal tendencies in victims (Bonanno and Hymel, 2013). Due to the ongoing security issues and identity thefts, some users have resulted to not using their actual names on social media. This is so that even if data about them is collected, their real personalities are safe. This research asked respondents whether they were still using their real names on social media and found out that only 40% of them were. The remnants had cleverly either changed one name or resulted to using nicknames instead which are considerably safer than actual names. Social media was seen to be deeply integrated into people’s lives. When asked whether they would live without social media, a whopping 75% of the respondents said that they simply could not. This shows that social media has already become a part of people's lives, another reason why it should be made secure. To further confirm that it was an integral part of life, respondents were asked just how many times they posted on social media. 55% said that they posted daily, while 30% said at least every week they made a post. Each time they posted, inevitably they were taking some risks if they shared their personal information. Most of the respondents said that they posted daily, which is good for the platforms while a potential danger for them as they could disclose regrettable information in their posts. 74% of the respondents said that they had between 100 and 500 friends on Facebook. Among these friends were supposedly people with some malicious intentions. Users ought to know that there are more dangers lurking around them on social media platforms; probably one of the 500 friends is a hacker or a stalker. There was an almost fair distribution of how 112 users set their Facebook privacy settings. 30% had their accounts private with 66% having either public or ‘friends only’ privacy setting. Of course, these platforms were built for social interactions, thus setting them as completely private would have beaten their purpose. This is why most users chose to either have their friends see their accounts or let the accounts to be visible by anyone. Privacy settings are mostly dependent on the sensitivity of the person towards his/her information being disclosed. This is why there is no one-off recommendation for privacy setting, where users ought to set their account. 85% of the respondents had given access to third party applications to some of their social media applications. These third-party applications do a few functionalities such as crafting for friends’ birthday cards on Facebook. However, it has been disclosed that these third-party applications were being given access to too much information than they required. For example, one would find a birthday third party application having access to his/her location, phone number, email address, and other sensitive private information. Concerning the personal data that users shared on social media, 92% gave out their real pictures, 80% their birth dates, 72% their locations, and 63% their email addresses. This is private data that is very sensitive and can be used by hackers, social engineers, identity thieves, and other malicious people. Users are oblivious of the dangers that they put themselves in when they disclose this information on social media. The social media platform will encourage users to spew out this information so that it may use it to profile them for advertising. However, behind the shadows are the malicious people collecting this information so as to use it to attack a user. |