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• #IndividualsPrivacyfirst
• #Manipulatebots
• #Fakethedata

EDUCATE YOURSELF – HOW TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA

There are many ways tech giants using our personal data. More than 90% of the Revenue is generated by using our personal information by Adverts. We know the fact that, it’s almost impossible for us to stop using these platforms like Facebook, Google, Instagram, WhatsApp. Its very important for us to read the Privacy policies of each platform. Educating ourselves will always be in our advantage especially in this area of internet and social media usage as we are so much addicted to it.

After recent Whatsapp privacy policy changes and many other incidents including influence on Politics and Cambridge analytics scandal on Facebook data privacy breach, it is very evident that, the data that we share on the social media, online behavior and habits of consuming online data can put us in severe danger as this data used at scale.

With this article I would like to share of few key aspects of the personal data shared on social media, helping to realize what can be shared on social media and what not.

1.   Objective of the sharing personal data on web

a.   Why do we care to share you?

                                         i.    DOB, Place of Birth

                                        ii.    Family relations

                                      iii.    Etc.,

2.    Usability rights of the personal data

a.    Who should be using the shared personal data

                 i.    Is it Social media owners?

                ii.    Or is it for our circle, friends & family

3.    Types of Platforms that are involved in Personal Data collection

4.    How should we protect our self from all this?

“Objective of the personal data”

·       What exactly you want to share

·       Whom to share

·       Is it with friends & Family

·       Is it to the world?

Do you really want the platform to use your data?

·       If yes, what all they can know about you

·        If no, what all info these should not be using

1.   Objective of the sharing personal data

The objective of the sharing the personal data would not be so serious to most of us. Many of us might not have any issue in sharing the data and few of us would mind it. However, it is always suggested that we will have to play safe and not to share personal data on social media.

It does no good, if you updating things like date of birth, place of birth, Family relation, as people who has to know this would any ways know these details and for those who you don’t know, except getting birthday wishes you might not achieve anything better than that, besides that you are possibly making your information to be available to be used by the people whom you don’t want to, which can put us in risk.

2.   Usability rights of user’s personal data

This would be most important thing that you should be careful with. Users must be clearly knowing what they are signed up by agreeing terms and policy like all the social media make us to agree.

These social media threaten our freedom/dignity by capturing our interests and behavior online by selling data to advertisers.

Every Status, Post, Messenger conversation, Like /Share/Tweets, places you visited/Logged in from, Pic you upload will continuously are being quietly recorded and analyzed to Judge us and to manipulate our way of thinking in many aspect is a very dangerous act.

3.   Types of Platforms that are involved in Personal Data collection

We must know the different types of platforms that we use in day to day life which is involved in our personal data collection. We must also have an understanding of how these platforms can use our personal information.

Free Platforms like Facebook, Google are collecting every small information about us continuously. They primarily use this information to Market the products on different platforms on the web by showing adverts on their own or partner sites. Although they have strong user privacy policy’s, there is always a risk of people miss using our private data, like an organization or like an individual. They can know almost everything about us and our family and friends.

When we think of other platforms which are like Paid as shown in the table, those companies are trying to engage people with their own production to keep them subscribed by paying monthly rental.

Marketing Platforms like Amazon, Ebay etc,, are trying to analyze your shopping behavior and start showing advertisements and relevant products that you browsed in the past to make them purchased. There are other companies also who have access to the user personal data like mobile manufacturers, Browsers and millions of individual apps.

All of this information is being used to train the model of machine learning so that they can know most of the information about an individual and start targeting them in many ways. Till now we have seen this is being used to Market the products to the people. However, if this information is accessible to the parties like Cambridge Analytica, this is going to be a huge problem which proved that Judging and manipulating one’s mind is not that difficult by targeting individual weakness and vulnerabilities.

4.   How should we protect our self from all this?

As all tech giants or their partners are using their intelligence to manipulate the data that they have about users, as an Internet user we will have to Intelligent enough to know, what should be done to get out of these.

We should consider educate our self how they are targeting and make sure we don’t not fall in to that targeting category – Learn to Manipulate bots/ update fake data

·       Update your DOB as 65+ and make it invisible

·       Unlike all the page you liked or unsubscribe

·       Remove location where you live.

·       Learn to edit and change Ad Preference

·       We don’t have to update every moment pic of our life

There are only a few of the steps that we can do to make sure our privacy is secured, however, this is just an initial step towards protecting your privacy on the internet. We must be more cautious and build our own way of protecting our privacy based on our requirements. Being a smart user of these social media we should be thoughtful enough to learn about algorithms and how they work to be able to build your own way of using those algorithms to your advantage. Along with this strategising your social media account ensuring to avoid all the useless content which is not helping us to grow in our career or personal life will help us a lot to be focused on our personal goals.

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