Social Media Security: A Struggle In Keeping Users’ Online Privacy

Nowadays, tons of selfies are uploaded to Instagram, millions of tweets cause trends and waves and countless of users log-in to their Facebook accounts sharing personal statuses, pictures and other things that one could think of spreading through the world's largest social networking site. Not to forget, the unbelievable number of basic info (such as name, profile, picture, gender, names of friends and other information that the user makes public) that Facebook apps capture. Clearly personal information are now ready for access or according to Google: user's info is "subject to automatic processing".

Facebook being the most accessible and most widely used social networking site is obviously not the site that could protect its user's privacy. The social media giant makes money from advertisers that is why the company shares its users' information to everyone. Facebook has security features that provide protection from scams and spams but all of these seem ineffective, Sophos.com reports.

Unfortunately, privacy is not a right. Keeping an individual's privacy intact requires a lot of work and critical thinking. In the case of celebrities, the loss of privacy is inevitable. However, on the part of the regular individuals who use the internet and social networking sites as part of their everyday living, online privacy is apparently now at stake.

The National Security Legislation Amendment Bill was recently passed into law. This law will strengthen existing ASIO surveillance powers and opening the possibility of mandatory data retention by telecommunication companies. Information like who their customers call, the location of all calls, and even the IP addresses assigned to each customer will be kept, News.com.au reports.

Unlike in Europe, a provision called the "right to be forgotten" was enforced by the European Court of Justice wherein links to pages that mention individuals which are inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant will be removed by companies like Google. However, people in Australia have absolutely no control over their names that appear in Google searches.

Meanwhile, the US National Security Agency's $1.7 billion data centre in Utah can practically store all personal data without individuals knowing. Individuals will have no privacy control over emails, text messages, browsing history, phone conversations and not even Skype calls. This condition is said to be a "wholesale blanket surveillance of all of us," according to Mikko Hypponen, chief researcher officer at Finnish security firm F-Secure.