Report: Analyzing Social Media Security and Privacy Concerns

This report delves into the critical security and privacy issues prevalent in social media platforms. It explores the widespread use of social media, its role in communication, and its vulnerability to cyber threats. The report examines the impacts of privacy breaches, including identity theft, profiling risks, and fake product sales, and their consequences on individuals and society. It also highlights the importance of understanding these risks and implementing preventive measures such as limiting information sharing, being cautious of third-party applications, using strong passwords, enabling multi-factor authentication, and configuring privacy settings. The report concludes with a reflection on the need for user education and awareness to ensure safe and secure social media usage, as well as the importance of smart thinking to avoid cyber-attacks. The report's analysis draws on various research papers to support its findings and recommendations.

Running head: SECURITY AND PRIVACY ISSUES ASSOCIATED WITH SOCIAL MEDIA
Security and privacy issues associated with social media
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

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SECURITY AND PRIVACY ISSUES ASSOCIATED WITH SOCIAL MEDIA
Executive Summary
This report describes about the security and privacy issues in the social media websites. Various
uses of the social media websites have been discussed in the report. This report also describes
about the impact of the privacy issues on the real world. There are prevention strategies
discussed in the report. A personal reflection has been provided at the end of the report.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Social media.....................................................................................................................................3
Privacy issues...................................................................................................................................5
Impacts of the privacy issues...........................................................................................................6
Prevention Strategies.......................................................................................................................7
Reflection.........................................................................................................................................8
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................11

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Introduction
Social media is the easiest way of communication in the world in the modern world.
Social media including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ have helped in maintaining the
communication network all over the world. On the other hand, social media have become
platform for criminal activities by cybercriminals.
This report deals with various security and privacy issues reacted with the social media.
The use of the social media has been provided in the report. This report focuses on three recent
research paper on the topic and analyses it. The daily use of the social media has been described
in the report. This report deals with the various risks involved in the social media.
This report outlines the limitations of the use of the social media related ti the security
and privacy issues. This report provides some solutions to the privacy issues of the social media.
Different preventive measures are provided in the report for mitigating the challenges and issues
related to the social media.
Social media
Social media networking has become a daily necessity for the people all over the world.
Social media has grabbed the attraction of all users over the internet. It has proved to a good
communication platform for people over internet (Gritzalis et al., 2014). People can
communicate with many other people including family, friends and other individuals. They can
also meet new individuals and make friends. Different social media websites including
Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have maximized the market of social media. The volume and
accessibility of private information on the social media have attracted different malicious users
over the internet. These malicious users have targeted many users over the internet using the

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social media. As commented by Gritzalis et al., (2014), various security risks in the social
networking are spear phishing, spoofing and web application attacks. These attacks are
successful due to trusting social environment.
Many people used to share their personal information over the social media that causes
risk for the data loss. The hackers hacks their social media account and gathers all the personal
information including contact number, address, financial information and confidential
information of business. The potentiality of the attacks on the social media account and profile is
generally intended to breach the personal information of the user and misuse it. Outside the
association, person-to-person communication can enable a business to reach and draw in clients,
enhance the client encounter, and deal with its image picture. Numerous organizations today
watch locales, for example, Twitter and Facebook, to tune in on the gab about their items and
administrations (Ventola, 2014). Their online image envoys can advance new items or, if a
business' notoriety is undermined, utilize web-based social networking to move the talk the
correct way.
There is a huge increase in the number of users of social media all over the world.
According to Alexander, (2014), there were approx. 1 billion users in 2012, that is 19.2% more
than that of 2011. The increase in the use of the internet among the users have increased the
threats of security of data and information (Kandias et al., 2013). There are many cases in which
users share posts about their personal life on the social media. These increases the risks of data
loss form the social media. The sensational ascent in assaults in the most recent year disclose to
us that informal communities and their a large number of clients need to do significantly more to
shield themselves from composed cybercrime, or hazard neglecting to fraud plans, tricks, and
malware assaults. Understanding these dangers and difficulties ought to be routed to stay away

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from potential loss of private and individual data. Long-range informal communication certainly
should be incorporated into the data security approach and client training.
Privacy issues
There are various privacy issues prevailing in the social media over the internet. Some of
them are discussed below:
Security risks
With the increase in the use of internet and lack of awareness, the security risks if data
and information is increasing. Various types of security risks including theft of identity, fraud,
phishing and cyber bullying (Li & Qian, 2016). People that provide personal data on Facebook,
Twitter and other social media websites are more prone to security risks rather than others. The
data is stored over the internet that is not provided with quality security protocols.
Identity theft
The attackers used to attack with the help of applications for which ask permission from
the users. If the user allow them, the application breaches into the profile of the users and hacks
data and information (Flanagin et al., 2014). The hackers can misuse the breached data and
information of the user.

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Figure 1: Security threats in social media
(Source: Li & Qian, 2016)
Profiling Risk
The profiling risk refers to the profile cloning. In this case, the hackers uses the personal
information of the users and make a clone profile of it. The clone profile can be used for
retrieving the information of other friends of the users online. There is another way of profile
cloning named as cross-site profile cloning (Elmaghraby & Losavio, 2014). In this case, the
attacker hacks the personal information of the user from one social media website and creates
another profile on another social website. This causes a huge risk of misinterpreting of the
personal information and use them for any type of criminal activities.
Fake product sale

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The hacker used to provide a fake advertisement of any product with huge discount offers
that attract the users and they click on it. The clicking on the advertisements transfers the profile
information of the user to the attackers (Sikkens et al., 2017).
Impacts of the privacy issues
The impacts of the privacy issues of social media have a drastic impact on the society and
real world. Most of the individuals are connected with the social media websites. They used to
share their personal information in the social media platforms for making new friends and
communicate with them (Khandpur et al., 2017). On the other hand, the hackers searches for
loopholes in the account of user and penetrate into their profile. They used to follow some
particular user and analyses the activity of the user over social media.
Social Impact
The individuals in the society are affected by the security issues in the social media. The
personal information of individuals are breached and can be misused by the hackers that causes
an imbalance in the society (Tagoe & Sharif, 2017). The reputation of an individual in the
society might be hampered with the data breach.

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Figure 2: Impact of social media
(Source: Tagoe & Sharif, 2017)
Mental Impact
The data breach in the social media can mentally affect any individual. The personal
photos and memories of any individual can be hacked during the attacks on the social media
websites. The social media platform has helped in maintaining the communication with different
people in all over the world (Fuchs, 2017). Therefore, the attacks in these websites can affect any
individual mentally.
Prevention Strategies

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The amount of attacks on the social media websites have increased in the modern world.
With the enhancement of the technologies and ICT, the frequency of the attacks have also
increased globally. However, few strategies might help in controlling the number of attacks on
the social media websites.
Limit the amount
Many individuals used to share their every personal information in the internet. These
attracts the hackers towards the account and profile. Therefore, it is necessary to limit the amount
of posts shared on the social media (Brivot et al., 2016). The users have to be concern with the
photos and videos sharing in the social media platforms.
Internet is public platform
The internet is a platform that is public to the world. Anything that is posted over the
internet is accessed by anyone in the world. Therefore, it is important to be concerned with the
information shared over the internet (Di Gangi et al., 2016). Many annoying contents are posted
on the social media that helps in breaching out data and information of the users.
Beware of third-party applications
Different types of applications are posted on the social media that are fake and fraud.
Many users tries to access those third-party applications and get trapped. The login credentials of
the user are transferred to the hackers and data is breached (Wamba & Akter, 2016). Therefore,
users have to be aware of these unnecessary applications posted on the social media platforms.
These helps in minimizing the cyber-attack over the social media websites.
Using strong passwords

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The account ad profile of the users have to be protected with strong passwords that
provides high security to the account. The passwords must be at least eight characters long
consisting of letters, numbers and special characters. This makes difficult for the hackers to crack
the passwords. Combining capita and small letters can be a better option for creating strong
passwords of the account and profile in social media websites (Zhang & Gupta, 2016). It is also
necessary to change and update the passwords at regular period.
Multi-factor authentication
The multi-factor authentication uses more than one form of authentication including
biometric, fingerprint scan, iris recognition and voice ID. These forms of credentials provides
high security to the account of the user (Jabee & Alam, 2016).
Privacy settings
The user must configure their privacy settings that allows access to personal information
to those trusted people (Patel et al., 2017). The privacy settings in the account helps in limiting
the number of people accessing the profile of the user.
Reflection
From the above discussion on the security and privacy issues in the social media
websites, I have understood that use of social media websites requires some special attention and
awareness. I think that the use of the internet and social media websites have increased from
previous years. This have increased the consequences of the using the social media. I understood
that Facebook has been most used by the users. Facebook provides a platform of communicating
with any people all over the world. Therefore, hackers have mostly targeted Facebook for
breaching personal information of the users. I think people have to be educated about the smart

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use of these social websites. This help in safe use of the social websites and communicating with
different people safely and securely. Social networking websites have been used for marketing
process of various products. I think users have to be smart enough to understand the difference
between real and fake product advertisements. Fake advertisements provide huge discount on big
brands that not feasible in real. I think that the users have to use strong passwords that creates
difficulties for the hackers to crack the passwords. I think information about the security and
prevention measures applied over the social networking websites needs to be provided to the
users all over the world. This might help in preventing them from using wrong way of using the
social networking websites. Therefore, I think by smart thinking, users can be safe from any kind
of cyber-attack on the social networking websites.
Conclusion
It can be concluded that the se of the social networking websites have been increased in
the recent years. The security and privacy of the users in these social networking websites has
been an important element in the cyber world. The cyber-attacks have been common in these
recent years. Therefore, the users have to be safe from these attacks. This report highlights the
security and privacy issues in the social media websites. There are various issues discussed in the
report. The impact of these security and privacy issues in the real world has been focused in the
report. The use of the prevention measures helps in preventing form the cyber bullying of the
hackers in the social media websites. The use of the strong passwords and updating the privacy
settings helps in minimizing the cyber-attacks over the social media websites.