The popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace and many other sites have increased immensely in the past few years. These sites not only connect people all over the world but also update them about the happenings all over the world (Archer et al., 2015). The most interesting part of social networking is that it requires very little knowledge of the sites and anyone can easily operate these sites. It just requires the users to create a profile and get started. The use of social networking sites has both positive and negative impacts. The basic purpose of these sites is to communicate and interact with the people. Using these sites involve creation of a user profile through which they can interact with others. This profile is visible to the entire public that is both friends and unknowns. The information shared is also visible to strangers. Therefore, this is the area where the security concerns arise as the personal information is subjected to theft and may cause online harassment that has become common among the youngsters (Sicari et al., 2015).
The social networking sites encourage the users to create their account or profile using their original name and information and they offer various privacy measures in order to ensure that their information remains safe and undisclosed. This is the security offered by the sites at an initial level whereas, the safety of the information depends upon the users as to how much safely they handle their information over these sites (Hargittai & Marwick, 2016). It has been noticed that the young generation usually does not mind sharing their personal information with a large number of strangers. This is the major cause of security concerns. The young generation is very efficient in using computers and technologies but they are usually not matured enough to handle the security issues that leads to problems such as theft, hacking and many more cyber crimes (Fire, Goldschmidt & Elovici, 2014).
One of the most debated topic nowadays is the cyber security and privacy concerns in the online networking sites (Caviglione, Coccoli & Merlo, 2014). Various journals and articles have mentioned this issue and have described that how these security concerns have led to several cyber crimes. Various articles have described the potential dangers that the young people might face while using the social networking sites (Vladlena et al., 2015). Therefore, here arises the importance of reading the privacy policies and measures that the social networking sites offer to its users in order to experience a safe social networking (Abdulhami et al., 2014). These social networking sites often come up with new security measures and privacy policies in order to keep the sites safer. The major reason for the sudden immense popularity of these social networking sites is the 24* 7 connectivity they provide in this virtual world. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many other social networking sites help the people to connect with their dear ones at any point of time. Updating the recent happenings and sharing of personal information has become a trend nowadays especially in case of Facebook and Instagram. These sites attract mostly the young generation between the age 15 to 26 years (Chen & Sharma, 2015).
Nowadays, the dependency of the people over these social networking sites is increasing tremendously. People share their day to day activities, their thoughts, news and other information over these sites on a regular basis. Considering the example of Facebook, the various security and privacy concerns can be better understood. Facebook encourages the users to create their Facebook account by providing their authentic personal details. The default privacy setting of Facebook permits friend, friends of friends and public (strangers) to view the basic information provided by the users but they are not forced to reveal any information. The further privacy setting offered by the site includes allowing the users to decide whom to add as a friend and whom to make visible the information and photos shared. Usually the youngsters neglect the importance of privacy concerns and they publically share their personal information and they blame the social networking sites on occurrence of any privacy issues (Gritzalis et al., 2014). Deontology states that the action’s morality must be based upon the norms that are based on whether our action is correct or incorrect rather focusing upon consequences (Playford, Roberts & Playford, 2015). Therefore, deontologically the action mentioned above is incorrect. The social networking sites have also proved to be very useful to the people who have carefully used them. Conversely, utilitarianism mentions that the best possible decision is the one that benefits most of the people. This theory states that is the majority of people are benefitted then the action is correct (Hartman et al., 2014). Considering the present situations, it can be said that posting selfies, activities and updating relationship status have become more trending among the youth than managing the privacy and security concerns over the social networking sites which is solely an act of negligence (Shapiro & Stefkovich, 2016).
With the increasing security and privacy issues, these social networking sites constantly update their privacy format (Jang-Jaccard & Nepal, 2014). However, locking the accounts using the privacy settings does not ensure safety of the profiles or accounts. Facebook encourages its users to provide their basic details such as age, sex, educational details, working details, religious views, home town and relationship status. But the fact is that there is no need of providing these details over these sites as the friends and family in the user’s profile already know these details. These social networking sites also encourage users to make new friends, find old friends and creating network for professional purpose. However, social networking sites have just become the platform to make the world accessible while neglecting the security concerns. The various cyber crimes have also been unsuccessful in keeping the users away from these social networking sites (Feng & Xie, 2014).
Although, these social networking sites provide various privacy settings and security measure but they have failed to stop the cyber crimes. The fact remains that sharing of personal information over these social networking sites can be very dangerous even after the various safety measures offered by these sites. With these sites becoming accessible over mobile phones, the use of these social networking sites has increased immensely. The most common cyber crimes witnessed are online victimization of teenagers and adolescents, identity theft and sexual harassments. Therefore, the necessity of following the privacy and security measures at every step while using these sites arises in order to make social networking a pleasant experience.
The majority of the users of the social networking sites are the young generations who often tend to neglect the security concerns while using these social networking sites. This leads to a major security issue that is identity theft. The users of social networking sites tend to share their personal details, photos and other personal information without changing the privacy settings. This makes their personal information and photos visible to other users of these sites who are unknown to them. This leads to misuse of their personal information. Often fake accounts have been noticed over Facebook in which some unknown person opens a similar looking duplicate or fake account of some authentic user and misuses the available information. This often leads to embarrassments and the original authentic user is compelled to delete his account.
The users must concentrate over the security concerns and educating the youth about the privacy concerns becomes very essential. It has also been observed that in some cases the original user is unaware of his fake account being created. Such cases of fake profiles and identity theft have become common over the social networking sites.
Therefore, considering the positive and negative impacts of social networking sites, enhancing the privacy settings by the sites is recommended. The young generation is also suggested to be more aware and careful while using the social networking websites. Conclusively, this proves that the security concerns arise majorly from the negligence of the users therefore, the users must be educated about the privacy concerns.
References:
Abdulhamid, S. M., Ahmad, S., Waziri, V. O., & Jibril, F. N. (2014). Privacy and national security issues in social networks: The challenges. arXiv preprint arXiv:1402.3301.
Archer, K., Wood, E., Nosko, A., De Pasquale, D., Molema, S., & Christofides, E. (2015). Disclosure and Privacy Settings on Social Networking Sites: Evaluating an Instructional. Standards and Standardization: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications, 287.
Caviglione, L., Coccoli, M., & Merlo, A. (2014). A taxonomy-based model of security and privacy in online social networks. International Journal of Computational Science and Engineering, 9(4), 325-338.
Chen, R., & Sharma, S. K. (2015). Learning and self-disclosure behavior on social networking sites: the case of Facebook users. European Journal of Information Systems, 24(1), 93-106.
Feng, Y., & Xie, W. (2014). Teens’ concern for privacy when using social networking sites: An analysis of socialization agents and relationships with privacy-protecting behaviors. Computers in Human Behavior, 33, 153-162.
Fire, M., Goldschmidt, R., & Elovici, Y. (2014). Online social networks: threats and solutions. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 16(4), 2019-2036.
Gritzalis, D., Kandias, M., Stavrou, V., & Mitrou, L. (2014). History of Information: The case of Privacy and Security in Social Media. In Proc. of the History of Information Conference (pp. 283-310).
Hargittai, E., & Marwick, A. (2016). “What Can I Really Do?” Explaining the Privacy Paradox with Online Apathy. International Journal of Communication, 10, 21.
Hartman, L. P., DesJardins, J. R., MacDonald, C., & Hartman, L. P. (2014). Business ethics: Decision making for personal integrity and social responsibility. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Jang-Jaccard, J., & Nepal, S. (2014). A survey of emerging threats in cybersecurity. Journal of Computer and System Sciences, 80(5), 973-993.
Martinez, N., & Wueste, D. (2016). Balancing theory and practicality: engaging non-ethicists in ethical decision making related to radiological protection. Journal of Radiological Protection, 36(4), 832.
Playford, R. C., Roberts, T., & Playford, E. D. (2015). Deontological and utilitarian ethics: a brief introduction in the context of disorders of consciousness. Disability and rehabilitation, 37(21), 2006-2011.
Shapiro, J. P., & Stefkovich, J. A. (2016). Ethical leadership and decision making in education: Applying theoretical perspectives to complex dilemmas. Routledge.
Sicari, S., Rizzardi, A., Grieco, L. A., & Coen-Porisini, A. (2015). Security, privacy and trust in Internet of Things: The road ahead. Computer Networks, 76, 146-164.
Vladlena, B., Saridakis, G., Tennakoon, H., & Ezingeard, J. N. (2015). The role of security notices and online consumer behaviour: An empirical study of social networking users. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 80, 36-44.
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