Facebook privacy - are you worried?

kidwithsmurf

My behaviour on Facebook hasn't changed since hearing about this scandal as I didn't need a privacy scandal to know that posting things online publicly or even shared to friends only can always end badly. This is why I've always tried to be conscious of what I post and rarely post on my Facebook to make sure nothing can be used against me or misused. I know many people post whatever they want and are fine, but knowing my luck I'll be one of the people who aren’t.

Hence, I understand there is meant to be rules, laws, policies etc in place to stop things being used against you or even misused... but let's face it, this is the Internet and there is no saying what or how people will use what you post to it, be that Facebook or any other website. For example on how what you post online can easily be used without your permission or even you knowing for good or bad, I posted a feedback review on the Google Play Appstore for an App and a local newspaper company quoted part of that review without even asking for my permission to put it alongside their article or if I agreed to have it in the article.

However, when it comes to sharing personal details like name, phone number, country, birthday etc I'm not too worried that Facebook has this information and may be misusing it as pretty much everything requires an agreement or profile these days which in one way or another gets my personal/private data from me. This personal/private data, most of which I set private, can still be seen by anyone working for the company you signed up to, be it Facebook or whoever and is supposed to be protected by the privacy policies. This said, we all know data selling is huge and that some of those privacy policies have loop holes that only the trained eye could really catch and let’s face it sometimes sites don't even have a proper privacy policy and we sign up anyway because our friends are using the site or because it's popular and trendy or because we see something on the site we want to use but need an account etc and don't understand who is getting access to what when we agree to the privacy policy. This is why telemarketers exist because one company you have signed up to has sold your data or leaked it and that's how they are able to contact you when you never knew they even existed. Hence, I'm no more worried about my Facebook privacy than I was before the scandal. I just tend to keep my posts minimal and monitor what I post to try to limit people using content I've posted on Facebook or online against me. As for my personal/private data like name, phone number and country etc I know that it's required to use Facebook and can't do anything to stop who has access to it beyond reading agreements and setting it private. Therefore, I don't worry that Facebook has access to it because in theory there are far more companies out there then Facebook that we've all given our personal data too who I'm sure have done something we probably didn't want them to such as sell your information etc. Also, even if I didn’t have a Facebook account and didn’t give them access to my personal/private data there is no saying that another site I may have accessed/signed up to wouldn’t have already sold my personal/private data to Facebook anyway whether I gave them permission or not.

In my honest opinion, the recent Facebook privacy scandal is only the beginning. As it’s known that it takes one major scandal to get other people thinking wait is this site doing the same and start reporting them too. It’s just that Facebook is a gigantic company that couldn't just sweep the scandal issue under the rug and get away with it. Like, I wonder how many other sites have had privacy scandals or are still misusing our personal/private data whether we gave them permission (When we ticked the privacy policy without fully understanding it) or not and we still use them because they are a part of our everyday lives? Hence, because everything requires an account these days I'm no more worried about Facebook privacy than I am privacy on any other website and it shouldn't take a scandal for people to realise how companies use our personal/private data and it should’ve been common knowledge that this isn’t a perfect world and where a dollar can be made our data can easily and will be accessed, misused or sold etc.

Overall, my behaviour hasn’t changed following the Facebook privacy scandal and I am just as conscious about what I share and post online as I always was before the scandal. Plus, if it wasn’t for Facebook to have been caught out first it would’ve been some other website and so on and we can’t just not use the Internet or stop websites/companies from getting our data online as to do this we’d have to stop using computers, phones, technology and the likes which in 2018 isn’t a viable option.