Privacy and Security Issues in Social Media

Social media is the media (content) that people create and upload, it includes newsletter, blog or video etc. It is a one-to-many communication where content is produced by the author (yourself) /organizations and viewers/customers can respond and comment. Depending on the types of content people wish to share, they can choose engage with viewers through social networking site such as:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Gmail
• YouTube
• Instragram
• Pinterest
• LinkedIn

They provide users with the platform to engage with numerous of the audience through the use of direct messages, comments, photo sharing, web links and blog posts etc. In the contemporary world, with the increased popularity of social media networking, it has become an important marketing tool for business to reach to their employees and customers. This is due to the risen demand for effective interactions and data gathering through the media, especially through social networks. This new method of interaction is transit from the one-to-one interact relationships to one-to-many interact relationships. Therefore, more and more organisations have started to participated in multiple social network platforms to promo their product and service as well as their brand. Popular sites like Facebook, Twitter that have the vast number of active users and people connections are the top picks for organisation to create social accounts. This provides business a great place to connect with customers and employees. But social media privacy and security issues continue to be a top topic among these social media platforms.

To me, privacy issues and security issues should be treated as two completely different problems. A security issue occurs when someone gained unauthorized access to protected sites through hacking. A privacy issue relates to unwarranted access to private information, but this does not necessarily involve security breaches, and it relates to two senses: social privacy and data privacy. The issue then cause negative communication impact to the organisation according to Shannon Weaver model of communication. The model has six concepts included: sender, encoder, decoder, receiver, noise, feedback. when using social network sites as the media for communication, the security and privacy issue will cause noise which makes the message more difficult to understand/decode by the receiver. In other words, when organisation generates the message and sends it to the receiver through social networking sites, the potential security and privacy issue will interrupt the message transmitting process and result in  inaccurate message pass on to the receiver. This could also lead to inaccurate/negative feedback back to the sender. Hence, a secure social network platform is required when using social media as a channel for communication.

Organisation stands on privacy issues on social media accounts

With social media security and privacy concerns continue to be the hot topic in the news. Organisations who use social media platform as a marketing tool to engage with customer should focus on lowering the risk on using social media. One of the most important aspects is the employees. As they are the representatives of a business brand, they are the users of social media accounts behind the computers to reach out to target customers. Employees that been assigned to this job have been given a lot of trust from the company by allowing them to interact with customers. while making employees feel empowered, organisations need to have training and policy in place to avoid security and privacy issues.

Below are the tips that can help avoiding the issues and ensure use of social media is  secure:

1. Employees need to be familiar with the security and privacy setting of the social network website
2. Employees involved in the social media should be given the right permission to access to certain social media tools. This means different levels of permission is needed eg: contributor, manager, administrator etc to define the roles which suits the needs of the business.
3. Approval workflows should be introduced when making social media posts. This means having at least two sets of eyes to approve social media content reduce the risk of mistake.
4. Have one social media management tool to help maintain and control social networks accounts. This will help users log into social media networks without passing around passwords and help managing users if their is any staff movements among departments/companies. The tool will create transparency to the social media account and hold employee accountable to their actions.
5. Always log out when finishing on any social network

National privacy and security issue on social media

The biggest social networking site involves in privacy issue for year 2018 would undoubtedly goes to the well-documented Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal.  The data mining of as many as 87 million users that was acquired by Cambridge Analytical is raising new concerns about the security of personal information stored on Facebook or any other social networking sites. We urge for a more strict data privacy rules to be in place for users to find and understand the privacy setting easier on the chosen site.

According to The New York Times, the European Union is going to enact new consumer privacy laws for its citizens and companies. The new European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation will take effect on 25^thof May. This regulation requires businesses to notify users of any high-risk data breaches that could personally affect them. Citizens also have the right to obtain copies of the data that businesses have collected and under certain circumstances, have the right to erase their personal data. The law also requires organisation to use clear and plain language when acquiring user/customer’s agreements to obtain their personal information. Hence, many technology companies are updating their privacy policies and terms of service to factor in the new law.

Conclusion

In the age of digital social media, security and privacy issue will not simply go away. Governments have a major role to play on implementing law protections for digital crimes. For people who are entrusted with sensitive data are provided with clear measures to ensure security and privacy.  Organisations, on the other hand, should be more proactive on providing written guidelines to their employees when use social networking service.

What is social media?

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

Social media is a set of websites and applications designed to allow people to write, share, evaluate, discuss and communicate with each other. It is a platform for people to share opinions and experiences with each other in real time. In recent years, social media has not only creates hot topics for people to discuss and comment on their social life but also has transformed the way people do business.

Social media is using internet technology and its tools to share information and create noise among people. It is considered to be the most effective way to reach to people and the impact is faster than any other traditional media with minimal cost. It could be both positive and negative.

The so-called social media is an information sharing process mainly created by the vast amount of individuals. There are two key factors to be emphasized: one is numerous and one is voluntary. If any of these two factors are missing, then it will not be classified as social media. The invention of social media relies on the development of Web 2.0 technologies. If the internet does not provide the users with more initiative, social media will lose its advantage of gaining more users. If there is no technology supporting the interactive modes, then customers demands will not be released for the business to get a better understanding of their target customers. Hence, social media is developed based on mass users and technical support.