The dangers of social media

While much has been said about the benefits of social media, there are also many dangers associated with this form of often impersonal networking – the screen-based nature of social media lends to the fact that we feel free to share information with others online – often people we have not met or would not associate with in real life, or even posing as people they are not. Think of all the scary cases of children disappearing after meeting people they have built relationships with online in chat rooms (keep in mind that it is the people, not the actual chat sites to blame here – they often have lengthy security warnings posted.)

I recently wrote about my distress at my friend, Peas’, discovery that someone had been copying excerpts from her blog posts, word for word. This brings up copyright issues, and the fact that people are not always who they claim to be online.

There’s also the issue of identity theft, as once someone gets hold of a set of your online passwords, they can access your social media profiles and pretend to be someone they are not. As a result of this, LinkedIn has a fairly lengthy ‘are you sure you want to de-activate your account’ process, filled with confirmation codes and click-throughs. Not merely a case of deleting the account, as who’s to say anyone is who they say they are, online? One way to avoid identity theft is to change your passwords often, and don’t choose the obvious, such as your name or your pet’s name.

A friend of mine also pointed out the latest form of spam called ‘phishing’ – most commonly, these are emails pertaining to be from banks, claiming to redirect you to a safe page to ‘update your details’ – be aware that banks will never update your details in such a way, and will never ask you to enter any personal details to do so. These emails are sent out completely at random, in the hope of reaching a live email address of a customer with an account at the bank being targeted.

The hacking of Facebook and Twitter a while back called upon the issue of privacy of personal information. There was uproar about Facebook’s privacy policy a couple of months back, when users discovered that anything they posted on Facebook becomes Facebook’s intellectual property, even when you delete your account – this was eventually changed because of complaints. Facebook has since updated and improved its privacy settings – it only takes five minutes to change your settings. People need to keep in mind that posting anything that goes against the privacy of their company or clients could give competitors insight to your work progress, and may lead to dismissal. Rather safe than sorry.

So, while it’s good to have some level of trust when networking/ socialising online, keep in mind that it can be a dangerous space – when in doubt, leave it out.