Privacy and Social Media
Exploring the topic of privacy as it relates to social media is something I was a bit scared to do. I know I am not fully informed on the topic even though I use multiple platforms without much thought to it. For the most part, I have believed that since most of my pages are private, my information is also.
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An article that caught my attention was one regarding Facebook quizzes. Although I do not post those any more, I used to post surveys and quizzes on Myspace very often. Looking back, that is a crazy concept as I was only 13 years old at the time. I have also seen an increase in these types of quizzes on my Facebook timeline since quarantine has begun and people have less to do. These quizzes or surveys ask questions for fun that involve your past and personal life. People are freely answering these questions without the thought of what it could do. I would also think most of these questions are not private matters in the first place. However, security questions when I login to bank accounts or credit card accounts have many of the same questions I have posted my answer to before. For example, the name of my first pet or the name of the first street I lived on has probably been posted on my past social medias. These are the type of questions I could have as my security questions. The small information we post on the internet could be a contributing factor in the risk of our own identity being stolen. This is something I honestly would have never thought about until I read this article.
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I also listened to a podcast titled, "Is Facebook Spying on You?" I have always found it shocking that advertisements will pop up on my newsfeed on things I have googled or even just been talking about out loud with people. I swear I have even had ads pop up that correlate to things I have only just thought about and not even said out loud. I know my phone can't read my mind but it has had me questioning how much these companies really know about me. To test a theory that our phones are listening to us, my family once talked out loud about wanting to buy a yacht to see if we would start getting ads about it. We laughed that our phones must have looked at our bank accounts and realized it wasn't a reality because we never did get an ad about a yacht. This concept reminded me of a movie I recently watched on Netflix called The Social Dilemma. After watching it, my husband (who has deleted his Facebook account) asked me if watching that made me want to delete. The sad thing is that as wild as I found this documentary, I couldn't bring myself to want to delete it. This podcast surprised me when it talked about how Facebook classifies it's users and then advertises accordingly. I went to check my settings and it was pretty basic classifications. However, many people have weirdly in depth classifications such as "someone who goes on their phone to avoid awkward social interactions". It really makes me wonder what Facebook really looks at and how it comes up with these classifications. It didn't surprise me at all that you receive ads based off the people around you as well. I have no interest in sports, but I get ads to USC hats and many more based off of what my husband has looked up. Facebook claims that they do not listen to the microphone from our phones, but many people are convinced that they do.
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The research that I have done this week on privacy and social media did not surprise me much. This is all information that I have heard more recently in the past couple years. Today's society is enraptured by social media and I think that this information is extremely important for people of all ages to be educated on. I wish I had known these things at a younger age myself. Many articles referenced that most people do not believe their information to be very valuable. Because of this, the amount of privacy they have does not bother them. I have definitely used that excuse myself. Although I am not planning to delete social media completely, I now know a few steps I can take to make my information a little more private. Many of these steps have already been taken by me before researching the topic in depth. We live in a world where social media platforms are almost impossible to live without. With the amount of people working from home, it has been a great resource to us. Knowing our usage may be inevitable does not mean we have to go into it blindly.
The topic of privacy and safety in regards to social media is a topic of interest for me. It is a topic that I have learned more about in the past year or so and I always seem to learn more as time goes on. The part you wrote about Facebook quizzes made my jaw drop to the floor! I never truly thought of all the information that is being freely given through a seemingly fun and harmless quiz online. I personally do not frequently take quizzes online, but since learning about this, I am never going to again. This sentence at the end of your post was so spot on, "Knowing our usage may be inevitable does not mean we have to go into it blindly". That truly is social media and privacy wrapped up into one sentence. I agree with you that there are some ways that social media can be beneficial, like how you mentioned for people working from home. But, there are also things we can do to protect ourselves and our safety, while still having online interaction with friends and family.
ReplyDeleteAlyssa, you had me thinking about all the Facebook quizzes I took when I had Facebook. At times, I would only seek out quizzes on Facebook for entertainment which is scary to think that all the information they took from me as data to sell to advertisers. I am curious to see how accurate they are about their representation of me, but I am also scared about how accurate they are. There are moments when I will be thinking about a product and then ad would pop up on Facebook and that is just so scary!!
ReplyDeleteI am so happy you mentioned the movie, The Social Dilemma because I have seen it too and I would recommend everyone watch it! It opens your eyes to seeing how exactly social media views us and how they control us.
Oh my gosh I totally didn't make the connection that those Facebook quizzes could be someone trying to learn your personal information. I used to do those quizzes, but I never took a quiz that asked me to type in some sort of information about myself. I stopped doing the quizzes recently because it would always have so many ads and it was so annoying to even take the whole quiz. Glad I stopped! I'm actually not surprised that ads will show up based on what I google. That's me leaving a "trace." I am mindblown though when I'm just talking about something and it shows up on my Facebook. I think people are definitely listening!
ReplyDeleteContinuing to stay educated is the first step to protecting yourself. I'm not a believer in deleting all of my accounts, but I am happy that I do have a sense of what is happening because I have agreed to a social media's Terms of Service policy. It sounds like your next exploration might be on Facebook algorithms!
ReplyDeleteAlyssa,
ReplyDeleteWow! Scary connection between those quizzes and security questions. What a rough world we live in! So much to do and prevent at the same time. I showed my class, The Social Dilemma, this year. The classes seemed to enjoy but it's hard to make an impact. Something today was crazy, during class we analyzed Beyonce's video, "girls won the world" and Tiktok later showed me a video playing that very song. I never have had that on my feed before😅. I hope we can strike a balance and teach our students ways to stay grounded while humanity learns to deal with technology in a healthy manner.
Alyssa,
ReplyDeleteYour comments about Facebook quizzes reminded me of something that a professor of mine had once shared. They had commented that websites will attempt to gather information about one's date and time of birth and where they were born in order to attempt to clue together a user's social security number. From what I remember, the first three digits are based on the region in which you are born. Having to guess 6 digits instead of 9 vastly increases the likelihood of someone guessing the right number. Thanks for the tips on the Facebook quizzes! I will have to avoid any quizzes like those that ask for common security questions.
Alyssa,
ReplyDeleteI also had a MySpace! I remember being in middle school and all my friends would talk about it. It took me a while to create an account because I simply didn’t want to begin a social media account. Now 10 years later, I have more than 3 social media accounts that I check on a daily basis. Your comment about your phone listening to your conversations reminds me of my friends! We always joke around that there’s an FBI agent on our phone that eavesdrop into our conversations and this is why we get personalized ads. I’m always wondering how it actually happens and I may have found the answer- our microphones and the access our apps have. It could also be the cookies we accept from web browsers!
-Vanessa Montalvo
Hi Alyssa,
ReplyDeleteYou bring up a good point. These quizzes ask specific information about you and you don't know where it could end up. I think I want to be more cautious now with what my security questions are. I usually pick the same ones. I should change it up.
I think you may be right about Facebook not listening in, however, using your search history to present ads to you. I have had this happen with my wedding searches. Once I looked up venues or dresses online, right away on Facebook, there were ads and posts about wedding information. Some were actually helpful, however, I did get tired of seeing the ads.