Social Media and Other People's Privacy

Running head: SOCIAL MEDIA AND OTHER PEOPLE’S PRIVACY
Social Media and other people’s privacy
Name of the Student
Name of the University

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SOCIAL MEDIA AND OTHER PEOPLE’S PRIVACY
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction....................................................................................................................3
1.1 Background.......................................................................................................................3
1.2 Problem statement.............................................................................................................4
1.3 Aim, Objectives and Research Questions.........................................................................5
1.4 Research Structure............................................................................................................6
Chapter 2: Literature Review...........................................................................................................7
2.1 Concept of Social Media.......................................................................................................7
2.2 Different forms of social media.............................................................................................7
2.3 Violation of Privacy in Social Networking Sites...................................................................9
Twitter........................................................................................................................................14
Whatsapp...................................................................................................................................14
Snapchat.....................................................................................................................................15
Skype.........................................................................................................................................15
Spamming......................................................................................................................................16
2.4 Social Engineering Risks.....................................................................................................18
Account risks.................................................................................................................................21
Content Threats:.............................................................................................................................22
2.5 Remedies..............................................................................................................................24
Chapter 3: Research Methodology................................................................................................25

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SOCIAL MEDIA AND OTHER PEOPLE’S PRIVACY
3.1 Research Philosophy............................................................................................................25
3.2 Research Approach..............................................................................................................26
3.3 Research Design..................................................................................................................27
3.4 Data Collection technique....................................................................................................28
3.5 Sampling Method and Size..................................................................................................28
3.6 Data Analysis Method.........................................................................................................29
3.7 Ethical Consideration...........................................................................................................30
Chapter 4: Data Findings and Analysis.........................................................................................31
4.1 Quantitative Data Analysis..................................................................................................31
Chapter 5: Conclusion and Recommendations..............................................................................41
5.1 Conclusion...........................................................................................................................41
5.2 Recommendations................................................................................................................43
5.3 Future work..........................................................................................................................43
References......................................................................................................................................44

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SOCIAL MEDIA AND OTHER PEOPLE’S PRIVACY
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Background
Social media is a proper collection of different channels of online communication that have
been dedicated for taking inputs from community for collaborating and sharing contents. These
websites have been dedicated with social networking forums, social networking, micro blogging
and other social media types (Perrin 2015). Social media has become a part of the human life.
Most of the youngsters have been active on various social media platforms. They used to share
their personal details over different social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Snap
chat, Instagram and WhatsApp. Therefore, security and privacy of data has become a serious
issue over these social media platforms. There have been various cases reported related to breach
of privacy and security of data and information of users over social media.

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SOCIAL MEDIA AND OTHER PEOPLE’S PRIVACY
Figure 1: Level of concern about online privacy in the United Kingdom
(Source: Fuchs 2017)
Social media has been becoming an integral part of users in the real world. Most of the users
have been active on social media websites every day. Users have been positing their daily life
activities over the social media. Social media has brought various revolutionary changes in all
over the world (Tuten and Solomon 2017). The driving factors for the adoption of social media
have been progressively accessing proper functionality and flexibility of social technologies.
However, there have been various limitations and challenges faced over social media.
Users have been facing security and private issues over social media. There have been various
cases reported over the social media related to privacy and security of personal data of users.
This has been becoming a new threat over social media. Both males and females have been
facing cyber bullying issues over social media.
1.2 Problem statement
The major problem discussed in this research has been the security and privacy issues faced
by users over social media. The internet has been expanding its growth over various industries
and users. Most of the users have been activities over the social media and sharing their personal
and daily activities over the social media platforms. This has become an issue regarding safety
and security of their personal data uploaded over social media platforms (Yin et al. 2015). Many
researches have reported that their e have been increase in the cyber threats over social media.
Various social media platforms have been facing data breach issues. Many users have been
complaining about loss of their personal data and internet over the internet. The major problem
faced by users have been leak and misuse of their personal information on other illegal work.

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SOCIAL MEDIA AND OTHER PEOPLE’S PRIVACY
The use of social media has been increasing on a daily basis. Therefore, the cyber security risk
has been increasing over social media platforms. Social media provide platform for sharing
personal information with others (Zhang and Gupta 2018). There has been lack of awareness
among users regarding sharing their personal information over social media. Therefore, this
create a huge threat for loss and misuse of personal information over the internet.
This research will be done identify the reasons behind privacy and security breach of data
and information users over social media. The aim of the research will be focusing in what degree
do social media users are caring about their privacy issues during sharing their personal
information over social media platforms. Therefore, there have been violation of various ethical
forms over the social media. This research has been focused on identifying the issues faced by
people over social media. This research has been done at social level for understanding their
views about their use over social media.
1.3 Aim, Objectives and Research Questions
The aim of this research has been focused on social media privacy issues faced by users over
social media.
Following are the research objectives:
 To identify whether social media networks protect the personal information of their users
in the same fashion or are there any differences
 To investigate who collects information about users apart from social media and spread
between parties
 To investigate how much social media users know about how much information is shared
with other parties

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SOCIAL MEDIA AND OTHER PEOPLE’S PRIVACY
Following are the research questions:
 Do social media networks protect the personal information of their users in the same
fashion or are there any differences?
 Other than the social media network itself, who else collects information about its users
and how is the information spread between parties?
 What do social media users know in the terms of how and how much information is being
spread? Do they care?
1.4 Research Structure
Figure 2: Research Structure
(Source: Created by author)
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Literature Review
Chapter 3: Research Methodology
Chapter 4: Data findings and analysis
Chapter 5: Conclusion and Recommendations

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SOCIAL MEDIA AND OTHER PEOPLE’S PRIVACY
Chapter 2: Literature Review
2.1 Concept of Social Media
Social Media refers to the form of media, which involves interactive participation. The
development of media can be divided into two different ages namely the broadcast age and the
interactive age. Broadcast age witnessed transferring of messages via television and radio and the
way of transferring messages was impersonal and time-consuming (Benson, Saridakis and
Tennakoon 2015). With the advancements in technology, interactive media came into force and
it became easier for individuals to interact in a more personal way. Social media enables
individuals to interact with many at a time and instant feedback can be obtained. The ease of
accessibility of social media has made it popular and it is the core of the ongoing revolution.
Social media involves some kind of digital platform that may be stationary or mobile. The two
main characteristics of social media are that it allows some sort of participation and it is
interactive in nature.
2.2 Different forms of social media
Some popular forms of social media in use are:
Email- The most common form of social media that is used in everyday life is electronic mail or
email. It is a form of exchanging messages between people using electronic devices. Email was
invented by Ray Tomlinson in the year 1960 (Wu, Shin and Luke 2017). It operates across the
network of computers that is termed as the internet. Previously it was mandatory for the sender
and the recipient to be online in order to send messages but at present, the emails use store and
forward model. Email acts as a reliable media to send documents, pictures and important files.
Examples of email are Gmail and Yahoo mail.