Protecting Privacy on Social Media: Methods and Importance

METHODS OF PROTECTING PRIVACY ON SOCIAL MEDIA
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Issues related to protection of privacy on social media...................................................................3
Analysis of the issues.......................................................................................................................4
Theories related to protection of privacy on social media...............................................................4
Importance of protecting privacy on social media..........................................................................5
Methods to protect privacy on social media....................................................................................6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
Reference list...................................................................................................................................8
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Introduction
In the digital age and with the expansion of social media use the privacy of social media users
has also become the main topic of discussion. The issue related to identity theft and protection of
privacy on social media has been the main concern for every country. The study deals with
identification of issues and analysis of issue has been done with the help of different case
examples. The study provides an insight into the matters related to protection of data and with
the help of theories it has been established. Importance of protection of privacy on social media
has been discussed in this study. In the end methods of protecting private information and other
data has been discussed. The thesis statement of the study is to find and recommend methods that
can be used to provide protection to people's private information on social media.
Issues related to protection of privacy on social media
Identity theft and account hacking
Social media users are easy victims of impersonation and hackers intrusion. As per the view of
Acquisti, Brandimarte and Loewenstein (2015), internet offers a lot of benefits and easy access
to information. On the contrary Marwick and Boyd (2014), argued that use of internet exposes
people to lots of threats like identity theft, social media accounts getting hacked and many more.
The most common and serious concerns of people on social media is related to personal
information theft. Most of the times hackers through unauthorized access into security
mechanisms, steal the personal and valuable data of people to cause some damage to the person's
reputation or for other illegal activities. As argued by Lunnay (2015), impersonation or identity
theft leads to loss of valuable information and causes damage to the person’s reputation.
Financial loss also results due to the accounts getting hacked as hackers find access to credit and
debit cards password and use it for illegal activities.
Stalking and location based issues
In the opinion of Chen and Chen (2015), social media has been the best platform to join and
make as many friends as possible. However as asserted by Fuchs (2017), sharing information
such as personal photos and location has also exposed the persons to threats like stalking, theft
and robbery. People connect to friends and too many strangers as well on the social media
platforms like Facebook. They are mostly unaware about the intentions of the strangers and thus
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