Cybersecurity Challenges in Social Media Erdal Ozkaya

6.3.1.2
 
From Alawawi 
The research done by Alawawi was in a college and most of the participants were 
students. This is a group of users that are not yet entangled with other life responsibilities and 
have more time to spend on social media. About their concern for privacy, 98% said that they 
were concerned about their online privacy. Again, this affirms that most users are 
increasingly becoming aware of their privacy. 60% of these students said that they used up 
between 2 to 4 hours on social media and the rest spend over 5 hours on social media. 
Therefore, this is a group that is vulnerable, because it spends a lot of time exposing more 
information about themselves to strangers. When asked the main reason for being on social 
media, half of the respondents said that it was in order to connect with friends and family. 
That can be translated to almost 80% of social media users who only join to stay in touch. 
This is the most critical group in social media as it generates the most content. The quotes, 
motivations, baby videos, cat photos, and hiking photos among other exciting content is what 
keeps users coming back to social media. Social media is only alive because users keep 
generating content and thus they ought to have their privacy respected. Instagram cannot start 
posting its own pictures, Facebook cannot update its own status, Snapchat cannot send its 
own clips, and LinkedIn will not connect a user to itself. These social media platforms exist 
solely due to the users who create and post content. 10% of the respondents said that they use 
it for advertising purposes. This is the group that social media platforms accord a little respect 
just to make money out of them. The real laborers, the ones who tirelessly create content and 
are not paid a dime are not accorded any respect. Instead, their privacy is violated, their 

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accounts are ransacked, private chats opened, and their information is collected and sold 
without their consent. It is the harsh reality of social media, always biting the hand that feeds 
it.
The respondents were also asked about their knowledge of terms and conditions of the 
various social media platforms. 70% of them confirmed that they had never read the terms 
and conditions, especially the privacy policies of these platforms. This represented the 
average social media platform user. It is unfortunate but not surprising to find out that users 
do not actually read the terms and conditions of social media platforms. This seems to be 
what social media platforms count on, their users being uninformed of the contents of the 
privacy policies or the entire terms and conditions. This is why the terms are flashed to users 
uncomfortably during setup and they are told to agree to them in order to continue with the 
account setting up process. They are strategically placed at that point because they are wordy 
and complex, thus most users will quickly click on agreeing to the terms. What they do not 
know is that that is the point they sell their rights. That is the point where social media 
platforms are given the rights to own a user's information. Social media platforms know that 
what they do is not totally good and thus they come up with long or complex worded privacy 
policies to discourage users from reading them. In the United Kingdom, the MPs said that the 
social media platforms used complex terms and conditions for the average user who has 
never stepped in a law class to understand. This is exactly why the average user will not 
know what happens to his/her data when he/she signs up with a social media platform. This 
research shows that a majority of users simply agree to terms and conditions that they are not 
knowledgeable of.
Concerning the security of social media platforms, 62% said that it was the burden of 
social media platforms to ensure that they were safe. 20% of them said that the responsibility 
lay with the government to ensure that their privacy was not violated. The last 18% said that 

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the responsibility fell on them. This is a clear illustration of how normal users think about 
their online privacy when it comes to who should enforce it. 62% of these respondents were 
of the opinion that since the social media companies created these platforms, it was upon 
them to ensure security and privacy of the users. These views can be viewed as the general 
feeling of quite a substantial number of social media users. They know that these companies 
had developers build these systems from scratch and within the development process, the 
companies ought to have ensured that total security was provided for users. This security 
must have included protection from privacy invasion from other users and third parties. It 
seems that these platforms only made the platforms for one-sided privacy. Users can, up to a 
certain level, protect themselves from other users. They can change their social media 
accounts to be private thus inaccessible to others, and they can block users that they find 
annoying or with malicious intentions. On the other side, the users cannot enforce their 
privacy from the prying eyes of the social media companies and the third parties that are 
given extensive access to user private information (Krishnamurthy and Wills, 2009). There 
are no restrictive settings that users can deploy to prevent these two intruders from collecting 
and using their data.
Another group believed that it is upon their governments to fight for their social 
media security and privacy. This is doable by laying down certain policies and establishing 
strict legislations. To the surprise of this group, some governments have been in cahoots with 
these social media companies to give them the private user information that they ought to be 
protecting. Other governments are simply not getting involved, probably quieted by some 
monetary rewards from these platforms for their silence. There are a few organizations such 
as the EU that are highly vocal concerning its citizens' privacy. Lastly, there was a group that 
believed that their online security and privacy fell majorly upon them. These are the users 
that are aware of the existing security threats on social media, especially stalkers, and identity 

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thieves (Krombholz, Merkl, and Weippl, 2012). They know that the more personal 
information they share on social media, the more danger they put themselves in. This danger 
can be extended to their family and friends too as has been seen previously when identity 
thieves start asking for money from frequently contacted people by their victim. These users 
are also aware that their information is being collected by the social media platforms and thus 
have reduced the amount of personal information that they share or have reduced posting on 
social media. There is quite a number of users that are opting not to post on some rather 
insecure platforms such as Facebook and this is why the company has started reposting a 
user’s old posts. This is the group that most users ought to be in but unfortunately, not all are 
informed enough to make this decision.