Social Media Privacy Is A Problem

It was discovered last week that Facebook apps have been leaking user profile information to third parties on the web.

According to the article by Samuel Axon, when users would click on an ad on Facebook, or also on MySpace because the same happened there not too long ago, the site would leak profile information of the users who accessed the ad to that ad's company.

Axon points out that not only are Facebook and MySpace vulnerable to this problem but almost any social media site could be vulnerable.

The problem is an issue of privacy. Many social media sites will say that they offer their users a great deal of privacy protection yet there are still problems like this occurring.

People who do not want their private information going out to people they do not know can have a tough time controlling it. Mainly the reason they have a problem is that they do not know how to go about setting their privacy to correctly hide their information.

Also as the article points out the Internet is set up in a way that it allows companies to know the exact web address from where users click onto their ads. It is a problem that has been around forever but nobody really knows about it.

However in light of the social media boom and more personal information being displayed on the web it is becoming a more prevalent problem.

How do we go about fixing privacy on the Internet? That is a question that I cannot answer. I would love to see some sort of safeguard put into place to protect people's privacy, especially with social media outlets, but the odds of that happening are a long shot.

For the time being users just have to be smart. Take the time and read through the privacy rules and settings on your social media pages. Make sure you know the sites rules and you can then set your page to the setting you want. That, for now, is the only way you can help protect your personal information on your social media pages.