A social profile is only worth as much privacy as a user can get on the social network. People do not realize how much information that some of the social networks keep about their users and what they use that information for (mostly monetary reasons). However, people have to ask how much information is too much information for the social media networks to have about them.
The social media systems may have bigger files on a user than some of the government departments. This is not a misnomer. The social media systems collect data about a person and their habits. They know things about a user that a user's best friends may not know about them. All because the users all have a false sense of privacy on the social networks and they (the social networks) use this false sense of security to make money.
The only asset that the social networks really have is the users of their systems. This means that they have to get revenue by selling the information about their users. They categorically sort their users for easy use. The advertisers then buy access to these lists and make money by targeting their ads to them.
There is a darker side to all of this, however. The applications that run on some of the major social networks are allowed to capture information about their users. Whatever is in their profile is fair game. Which means, a 3rd party company could capture a name, their job, their date of birth, who they are married to, and who their kids are all in one fell swoop. Who knows what else they could capture, if it is on the social profile then it is fair game. This could even be their home address if a user is not careful.
A company that develops an application for the social networks does not have to tell the social networks what they will do with the data (most of the time). Therefore, this information is transferred unchecked and for whatever use the company or developer deems appropriate. This may be the scariest side of the social networks.
The social networks have made privacy not as private as most people think it should be in the first place. The truth is that privacy is mostly dead on the social networks unless the user takes up their sword and fights to keep the privacy that they had when they began to use the system. The truth is that a person cannot have more social privacy, they only make choices to keep the privacy they already have in their possession.
Therefore, every person who uses a social media platform must ask him or herself if the lack of privacy is worth the connections they make on the social media systems. This means that every step and move on the social media systems brings them closer to having no privacy at all. This also means that businesses can invade a person's life at will if the user does not make the right choices to keep those businesses out of their lives.
The best thing for a person to do is to be very careful with what they post and say on the social media systems. It is fair to assume that anything on the social media systems can and will be sold because the legalese is hidden in the fine print. Therefore, a person must be extremely careful what they say, what they "thumbs up" or "like", and what applications they use on social media networks.
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