Is Online Actually Safe? — Social Media Giants and Data Breach

We have seen Social media giants like Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and many more becoming extremely famous in the past few years. A lot of people have been making access to these platforms for personal as well as professional reasons.

Especially since the Covid, the use of these platforms has increased a lot. Online businesses have been set up and the older businesses have also shifted online and that has made the use of these platforms increase like anything. Not only business but Jobs, Education, Shopping, almost everything has shifted online.

We can clearly see the data below that shows the use of these social media giants in 2021. The Top 3 most used platforms include Facebook, Youtube, and Whatsapp. These platforms are said to offer totally safe and secure space for users without any intervention in their personal data. But is that actually true?

What is Data Breach?

It is an incident where information is stolen or taken away from a system without the knowledge or authorization of the system’s owner. Similarly, instead of stealing it from the system, data can also be stolen from the social media accounts of a person. The data may involve sensitive, confidential, private information that we do not wish to share with people like credit/debit card numbers, online banking details, our personal information, or pictures and videos.

In the study of 2016–17, it was found out that Snapchat management had access to the private information of the users and could take it out whenever they wanted to. A few months ago, we also got to hear after WhatsApp’s update that WhatsApp could now get access to our chats and personal details but soon Whatsapp ensured that data security is offered to the users.

Who is to blame for the data breaching? The hackers?

Either the case is that the hackers have got stronger sources to get the information or something else is going on. The Social Media platforms are forgetting about security until a strong hack reveals their lack of the measures taken for security.

So, what can be done in that situation? How can we secure our data by ourselves?

We can try to limit the posting of personal details on social media giants as much as we can. We can share our details if necessary with the platforms that completely guarantee the safety of our data. Our safety is in our hands and we are the ones who can make the safest place for ourselves.