Let's admit it. The rapid change in social media has changed the us, the world and everything. Online safety and privacy remains as the main worry of many. Especially in Facebook, many are still wary about displaying profile pictures, using real names, posting comments, etc.
Recently, the sister of the founder of Facebook became a victim of privacy invasion when a family picture she posted in her own account for her own friend's viewing was tweeted in Twitter publicly. How did it happen? Very simple - her brother was tagged in the pictured, so it was viewable by all her brother's friends, and one of his many friends downloaded the pic and retweeted in Twitter!
So, its understandable, why many are not comfortable about posting pictures on the net. You'll never know where the pic will end up. No matter how private your privacy settings are. All you need is one idiotic friend. Lol.
Got me thinking..shall I stop posting pictures?!
Well, I don't post a lot but I do have my travel albums, a kids album of my beautiful nieces and nephews, friends, and some random stuff - you know, beautiful wonderful moments that you can't resist to share (and show off).
I've mentioned before, there must be billions of pictures stored in Facebook at the moment, the chances of our pictures being leaked out is close to nil. Unless, we are some top notch celebrity lar. So, the only risk is our very OWN friends!
SOLUTION : Start reviewing your friends list :D Remove or restrict access to those that you have the slightest doubt or don't know that well, etc.
Another worry is the Profile Picture. There was a recent news about a lady's profile picture being used in a 'entertainment service' page. That's quite worrying. Of course, the solution is Not having a real profile picture, but then ..it's no fun not having one. And, Facebook's profile picture is on Public by default. Hmm..
After some thoughts, I had a solution. Similarly..there are billions of profile pictures in Facebook, what are the chances of us getting picked on? The more beautiful you are, the higher the chance that is. So, don't put so beautiful and sexy profile pictures lor :P
In conclusion, in my opinion, let's not be over paranoid. General rule of thumb in Facebook:
Check and recheck all your settings.
Everything should be set on Friends Only, not even Friends of Friends
(unless it's public message that you'd like to share or promote like charity, events, etc)
And of course, make sure your Friends are real Friends.
Remember that all your actions, clicks, comment, likes in Facebook or anywhere in the net is visible and can be easily traced. A simple LIKE in a your favourite brand page or a complaint you posted about shitty service in your bank's page - these will be visible to public cos these are public pages. So, be careful what you comment, like, etc in public pages. Personally, I prefer sending emails or private message instead of writing on the public columns. After all, I don't need the whole world to know about my questions / issues.
Similarly, I always think twice before I hit the Like function in any Public post, news, pictures, etc. Why? Because whenever I LIKE something that is Public, it appears in my friends Facebook Ticker and may be even the main news feed. Imagine how irritating it is when I Like 20 items in 10 minutes?!
Similarly (again), if you don't want your posts, pictures, etc to appear in some stranger's ticker or news feed, review your settings! If a picture you posted in on Public, when I Like or comment on it, it will be visible to my Freinds! Simple..
Even games, do you know that your game activities will appear in the Facebook Ticker? Example, I'm on Zynga games like Cityville, I don't want Zynga to report to everyone what and when and how I play Cityville! So..review all your games and apps privacy settings - in my case, I changed to Only Me.
And..that's only about Facebook. I have not even touch on Intagram, Twitter, Foursquare, etc etc. I'm not going to...but I guess the same rules apply. Think twice before postign anything. Check your privacy settings. Think twice before you accept any new freind requests..
Just my two cents worth...
No comments:
Post a Comment