In the last four-five years, social media apps trends have undergone a lot of changes. Now, people want more privacy in their social life. However, the important point is how secure is their social life?
The Changing Trend of Social Media Apps
We are living in an era where it has become relatively easier for anyone to peep into someone’s personal life through their social media profiles. Despite big claims by popular social channels like Business Facebook Page, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Twitter, no data is secure. Every day, we hear about incidents where people lose important data from their social media channels.
There were cases where personal photographs were uploaded by a jilted lover causing a lot of mental trauma and anxiety. Initially, people did not know much about different social media settings and were unable to make their accounts private but gradually this trend started changing. And finally, the new trend of private messaging came in the year 2017.
There was one study carried out by buidfire.com on the leading social media apps like Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp. The topic of the study was which messaging apps provided private messaging in a more convenient way. The results of the study were shown through a graph showing WhatsApp and Facebook right at the top. However, the majority of people are still clueless about things like the importance of privacy and how safe the so-called privacy is for common users.
Let us examine the safety factor of some popular social media apps.
1. WhatsApp
This is one of the most widely used social apps not only in India but also in the world. An ordinary user is seldom bothered about the risks involved. So, how safe is this popular app? It goes without saying that WhatsApp is clearly the most private messaging app. Only those who have either your mobile number or are connected to you can message.
However, the data of WhatsApp is shared with Facebook because the popular messaging app is part of the Facebook family. Therefore, if your data gets stolen from Facebook, then all your contacts from WhatsApp and the data linked to those contacts will also be compromised. To ensure the security of your account, you must change the privacy settings in the app to avoid unwanted users.
So, how to make your account private? It’s simple – just go to the WhatsApp settings option and click on Privacy. Here, you will get the option to hide last seen, profile photo, status, etc. Besides, you also get options for live location and read receipts which can be further customized as per your requirements.
2. Facebook
A few years ago, the Cambridge Analytica case created a big furor when data of millions of Facebook users was uploaded on the website. Till that time, Facebook was considered one of the most secure social media apps. However, this incident changed all that as a large number of users migrated to other apps apprehending security risks. It has been observed that data can be easily shared with third parties. Normally, there is a lot of data on your Facebook account including posts and photographs. It is suggested to take help from privacy settings to disallow unwanted people from your profile.
How to make your account private?
Visit the privacy settings of your Facebook account, and customize the option for who can see your upcoming posts, photographs, numbers, contacts, etc.
3. Instagram
You thought there is no such problem with your Instagram account. In fact, the reality cannot be further from the truth. Because even if your account is private on Instagram, your post can still be seen with the help of the hashtags that come as part of posts. Brand promotion on Instagram is ten times higher than on Facebook and eighty-four times more than on Twitter and hence the scope of data going viral is also relatively more. Nowadays, Instagram is the most popular social media platform for digital marketing of the business as well as for your brand page promotions you may also increase Instagram followers online.
How to make your account private?
You can easily make your Instagram account Private. Once you do this, your posts and photographs will be visible only to the people who have been approved.
4. Twitter
Twitter is as unsafe as any other social media app because there is no special security available on Twitter. Things like data theft are a very common feature for a platform like Twitter. However, by using privacy settings, you can easily make your account private.
How to make your account private?
You can easily customize your account by changing the privacy settings on Twitter. You can also opt for a two-step verification by generating OTP on your mobile for signing in to your account. This gives you an additional layer of security. Moreover, you can also set the privacy of your tweets, and hide your location to make your account more private. However, the fact remains that the concept of secure social media apps is still a myth.
