Privacy in Internet

Do you think our privacy is important? If yes, how you make sure they are protected?

When we talk about Internet, what is the first site you would automatically click and go first? Is the ‘Setting’ and privacy site? I will discuss on the topic of privacy and how it effects us.

Privacy is a fundamental human right that underpins freedom of association, thought and expression, as well as freedom from discrimination. However, ‘Privacy’ is not defined in legislation, and providing a conclusive definition is difficult. Privacy includes the right to be free from interference and intrusion, to be able to control who can see or use information about you and to associate freely with whom you want.

Instagram, which is an American photo and video-sharing social networking service owned by Facebook, lack of users privacy control. According to a Business Insider investigation, Instagram has been allowing a San Francisco-based marketing agency, HYP3R, to flout its rules and collect information from millions of users. For example, HYP3R make use of an Instagram security lapse, allowing it to zero in on specific locations, such as hotels , and vacuum up all the public posts made from the locations. And also, HYP3R did not access any nonpublic data from Instagram users who set their profiles’ privacy settings to “private.”

One more example, there is a Malaysian You Tuber’s Instagram has been hacked as below. She has 350k followers, her account name has been taken and the hacker change the password as well. She lost her accounts just overnight.

Let’s talk about fake accounts of Instagram. According to Mobile Marketer in 2018, Instagram may have as many as 95 million bots posing as real accounts, how scary!

Some of the people set their accounts as public, which means any accounts can see your photos, video and leave comments. However, some of these bots actually use real people’s likenesses (without their knowledge) and are employed to sway opinions, impact someone’s influence online, and scam unwitting users. Fake accounts are also used to attack people, they often cyber-bullying people, comment posts with negative and harmful tone such as “You are so ugly!” “You are so fat!”, these kind of comments will hurt people heart and soul virtually. In addition, the bot may be friending you so it can spam you private messages.

In my opinion, it is important to think before you share something online. It is best to me that such sites should be appropriately used to avoid issues. Well, what are your thoughts on this? Welcome to leave your comments below!

References:

1. https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2018/05/199439/fake-followers-on-instagram-problem-check
2. https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/instagram-just-acknowledged-it-has-a-much-bigger-privacy-problem-than-we-thought.html
3. https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/your-privacy-rights/what-is-privacy/