Think
Explore
Social media has become embedded in our daily communications with friends, co-workers and personal and professional networks. Since social media has become such a boon to marketing strategies, our data traces (which includes basically every action we take when interacting on a social media platform) has the potential to be analyzed so that marketing efforts can be targeted to fulfill our every desire. And, since most of us have powerful computers at our fingertips (in the shape of a smartphone), being online is as convenient as our data plans will allow. But this convenience comes at a cost to our privacy.
Increasingly, our online behavior is shaped by the apps we use to connect with others. When’s the last time you were asked for permission for an app to access your camera or your photo library, etc. Before you gave your permission, did you give it a second thought? If you are like most of us, probably not – which is why (according to a 2016 article in Time magazine) your favorite apps know more about you than you realize. This is because of a little thing called a “third-party library” of code, which makes it easy for apps to share your information between them – which can include your contact list, location, posts, name and birthdate and GPS location. And if that seems creepy to you, these apps aren’t violating our privacy – we are giving it away – every time we click OK on a permissions notice.
How has your online activity transformed over the years? How and why we use the internet is constantly shifting according to our needs, values, priorities and (to a large extent) where our friends are. If you are concerned about having more control of your data and your privacy, there are a few things you can do – as recommended by Rik Ferguson of Trend Micro (on YouTube):
- Think about the apps you choose to use. Set up the app when you can spend some time learning how the app works. Limit the information you give to just what it needs to operate – usually just an email, username and password. Your birthdate is tied to many important pieces of identifying information, so you may want to choose a different date if your birthdate is required.
- You can adjust your privacy settings (on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram for example) to not allow search engines to index your posts or limit access to only your followers or friends.
- Consider the trade-off before you link apps – is it necessary or will it save you a bit of time? And is that worth a privacy risk?
- If you’re sharing photos through social media, remember that your GPS coordinates might be embedded within the images metadata, and take steps to protect yourself.
Links
- Facebook’s new privacy policy | Facebook
- What’s new on reddit? | Reddit.blog
- Will Social Media Monitoring Help Keep Kids Safe? | CBC News (2016)
- Teaching Kids to Be Smart About Social Media | KidsHealth (2018)
- Safe of Social Media Toolkit | Office of the eSafety Commissioner (2018)
- Being Smart on Smartphones and Social Networks | Canada Safety Council (2018)
- Social Media Safety | RAINN (2019)
- Internet and Social Media | Kingston Police (2019)
- National Cybersecurity Alliance
Not sure what it would look like but we do learn about what it means to be a citizen of a country or of a governance (i.e democracy)–why should we not learn about what it means to be a digital citizen of the World Wide Web? Especially in consideration with how deeply entrenched the internet is in many people’s daily lives (particularly in developed countries).