Social Media Security as Important as Locking Your Doors

Social media is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people by sharing information and communicating freely, such as Facebook, Twitter, Kakao Story, Instagram, Band, and YouTube. As the spread of smart phones increases, social media became available regardless of time and place, so it has become an inseparable part of the lives of modern people.

A Korean web portal surveyed 693 members on the “Use Pattern of Social Media and the Status of Its Utilization.” It reports that 91.3% of the respondents are using social media, and that their purposes were for communication with others (63.2%), diverse information and trend research (60.7%), relieving boredom (46.9%), recording and sharing their daily life (38.6%), participating in events (23.2%), and concerning about falling behind (7.7%).

As the survey results show, social media is attractive because people can interactively connect with others anytime, anywhere. Giving regards to each other on social media, people are satisfied with empathy and replies, and making sure that they are not separated from society but are maintaining a smooth relationship.

However, just as there are two sides of the same coin, there are drawbacks behind the benefits which are revealed on the surface. Let’s find out what are the deadly traps hidden in social media and how to use them safely.

Indelible Digital Traces

Social media is a sea of information. Users easily post articles, photos, and videos on their social media, and take a spacewalk through others’ accounts and look into their posts. Posting something on social media means that you are okay to share with it. But the problem is that the ones you share the posts with won’t be only your close acquaintances.

Mark Zuckerberg, the cofounder of Facebook, declared that the era of privacy was over. The rapid spread of social media happens to expose personal information more and more. Name, social security number, address, contact information, fields of interest, size of household economy, values, children’s school, movement, personal connections, location … there are over a hundred types of private information that are obtainable through the information disclosed by users on social media and through the history of their visit to others’. This is the result of users’ willingness of giving out their information to social media companies in exchange for a little convenience and pleasure.

The traces of social media activity remain on computers and smart phones as an invisible digital mark called “cookies.” This gives possibility to track down what the user has done online, and the user’s general information gets handed over to diverse companies. The user, however, knows nothing about this. Active users are like unpaid workers who are constantly supplying materials to big data, from the standpoint of companies. In actuality, Internet companies and their advertisers make huge profits by continuously observing and collecting users’ online traces.

Unlike analog information on paper or on recording tape, which wears out or disappears over time, digital traces do not. Because of this, postings and photos that posted on social media get exposed later and cause the users to be really embarrassed. Even if people had no qualms on the postings they wrote, being honest with their feelings and on the photos in those days, their mind change at some point when the circumstance changes. Despite that, your cookies follow you like a tag. Digital information that once left a user’s hand floats around the world and may return to the user like a boomerang.

Parents’ Excessive Use of Social Media Endangers Their Children

The prestigious British dictionary Chambers selected “overshare” as the word of the year 2014. It means excessive disclosure of one’s personal life to others on social media. In a similar vein, a new term “sharents” appeared. This is a compound word of share and parents and refers to a parent who posts their children’s everything on their accounts. And such behavior is called “sharenting.”

There are reasons for their excessive postings: to leave a small record of daily life, to share memories with acquaintances who are away, for my child is adorable, to share parenting information and concerns, etc. All these can have negative consequences, contrary to users’ intention.

In a TV program in South Korea conducted an experiment on little kids of social media users. The subject, who obtained some children’s information from posts and photos put on the social media, approached the children, while their parents are absent, to examine their reaction. The children were vigilant to the stranger’s approach at first. But as soon as they noticed that the stranger knew in detail about themselves like when and where they went and what they did, they stopped doubting right away and followed the stranger. The mothers who had been positive about social media activities were shocked to see this.

Meanwhile, in October 2016, Darren Randall (13), who lived in Alberta, Canada, filed a lawsuit against his parents. It was because his parents posted his childhood photos that made him embarrassed. In the same year, in Austria, a teenage girl sued her parents when they denied her request to delete her childhood photos posted on their account. In most of these accused parents’ social media sites featured their children’s naked bodies, toilet training, and funny photos.

In France, parents who post photos on social media without their children’s consent are subject to imprisonment of up to one year and fines. In Vietnam, a new law is being made: If parents upload their children’s personal information like photos or videos on their account without their children’s permission, they can get penalized. Children look so cute and adorable in the eyes of their parents, but children are also independent subjects who have the right to make decisions and protect their personal information. Parents must be aware of this when posting content related to their children online, and check whether if they might be humiliated or endangered. Parents’ mature use of social media can protect their children’s privacy.

Safe and Wise Use of Social Media

The Korea Internet & Security Agency surveyed 2011 on 200 domestic Twitter users and reported that 63% of them were revealing their schedules, and 83% their location information. Because they are sharing their daily lives on social media in real time, their plans for vacations and family events, photos taken at vacation locations, tickets for performances, etc. get released to unspecified people. What is the most dangerous thing is that based on this, it is predictable when their house gets empty. When posting your information on social media, check for risks and be cautious about posting.

In actuality, this case happened in the United States; a thief robbed 20 empty houses of people who posted articles on social media about going on their vacation. And a survey of thieves convicted in the U.K. in 2011 showed that about 80% of them searched for houses to break into through social media. Location exposure can be misused for voice phishing as well as theft. This is because there is a high probability that you will be deceived if a hacker identifies specific location of your family who went on vacation and asks for emergency fund to get out of danger.

Social media is like an opened diary. So users cannot help but be conscious of how they are presented to others. For this reason, some people fake their lives to induce others’ interest and reaction. However, even though social media is a show-off space, if self-proud or reckless selfies are stretched too much, those cause fatigue to people around them.

Moreover, if you frequently encounter others’ fantastic lives on social media, you will feel a sense of deprivation, comparing your life with theirs. Continued negative emotions can lead to stress and depression. There may also be the symptom of Fear of Missing Out [FOMO] syndrome, which is a fear of being alienated on social media.

Do not focus on the life of showing others or watching others’ daily lives with envy, but value the time given to you all the more. In order to avoid being addicted to social media, limit the time and place of use, and carefully consider and decide what kind and how much of information you will share online. It is a good idea to set privacy bounds so that you can share with only close people. When sharing, remember that you must be careful not to disclose not only your privacy but also others’ privacy and their unwanted photos.

“Social Blackout” means stopping the use of social media due to adverse effects. Reportedly, the biggest reason users choose social blackout is because of the leakage of their private information. This also shows that the number of people who are aware of information security is increasing.

No matter how rich digital technology can make our lives, its misuse is worse than no use, and even more so if it is targeting you for crime and threatens the safety of you and your family. For personal information protection, each enterprise must set out actively, but users themselves must be conscious of security more than anyone else. Just as we always secure the doors strictly for the safety of our homes, let us take a particular attention to securing our online doors.