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social media privacy


Raytheon’s Riot Knows Your Next Move… Before You Do: The Social Media Privacy Report

Posted on Wednesday, March 6th, 2013 by

Location-based check-ins can be fun and engaging, but they are also dangerous. In the past, we have blogged about how and why plotting your whereabouts on a social network doesn’t  just mean a loss of privacy, but can also endanger your well being.

Making it even more risky is Raytheon’s Riot, a data-mining software that can track people on social media. Every time you check-in somewhere, post a tweet about where you are going or upload a photo of where you are, you’re creating a footprint of your everyday life. Eventually patterns begin to form and this is where Riot comes in to play.

And trust us: it is scary. Read More

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Facebook Graph Search: The Good, The Bad and The Scary

Posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2013 by

Facebook has always had issues when it comes to privacy. Each time the social media giant comes out with a new feature, it seems there is an uproar by privacy advocates about the implications and potential security issues. This took place with the Timeline switch, the sponsored stories debacle, and now one of Facebook’s newest features, Graph Search, is in the hot seat.

Let’s take a closer look at this new tool and find out what it is, why you would use it, and how to protect yourself from its prying eyes. Read More

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Tweets Should Be Private: Twitter Fights For User Privacy

Posted on Friday, August 31st, 2012 by

It is going to take more than 140 characters to describe this one, but we can try: “Twitter defends #privacy. Fights in court to protect users’ 4th Amendment right in account; deleted tweets are not automatically public.” Read More

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Concerned About Your Privacy? We Don’t Recommend Facebook’s Recommendations Bar

Posted on Friday, August 3rd, 2012 by

If you’ve surfed sites like Mashable, Wetpaint and The Mirror in the past week, you may have noticed a little plug-in widget on the bottom right hand corner of the screen (see the screenshot at left). This little handy box is called the “Recommendations Bar,” and it is the latest way that Facebook plans to make content more social.  But it also might be just another invasion of user privacy. Read More

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Your Facebook Chats are Being Monitored, Find Out Why: The Social Media Privacy Report

Posted on Friday, July 20th, 2012 by

What you say in your private chats and messages on Facebook may not be as private as you think. According to a recent report from Reuters, the social media giant employs a mums-the-word technology that scans posts and chats for criminal activity. If something is fishy, the content is flagged and then read by an employee who will access the conversation and call the police, if necessary.

Find out why. Read More

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Finding New Friends Nearby with Facebook: The Social Media Privacy Report

Posted on Friday, June 29th, 2012 by

Last weekend, Facebook discreetly launched a new mobile feature: Friendshake, a.k.a. Find Friends Nearby.  Initially available via the mobile website and then offered — while still subtly hidden — in the app version of Facebook, the feature was designed to allow users to find potential new friends located in local proximity.  And just as quickly and quietly as the feature appeared, it was pulled from the Facebook experience. Read More

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Ask the Expert: Twitter Opts In to Allowing You to Opt Out

Posted on Monday, June 4th, 2012 by

Q: “I recently heard that Twitter was implementing the Do Not Track feature for its users. This sounds good, but I don’t really know much about it. Can you tell me more about Do Not Track?”

Twitter should be applauded for putting our privacy before their profits.

While the Do Not Track feature is not the only thing we should be using to protect our online privacy, it’s important that a social media company like Twitter supports robust privacy tools. The Do Not Track feature is one of those tools.

First, let’s take a look at the Do Not Track feature and its pros and cons. Read More

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Professor Uses Online, Offline Data to Connect the Dots Of Your Digital Life

Posted on Thursday, May 17th, 2012 by

Even before its $1 billion acquisition of Instagram, Facebook was home to more than 60 billion photos and was adding about 250 million more each day.

But what if those photos — even your photos — could lead people to identity you offline?

Last year, a Carnegie Mellon University researcher conducted an experiment by “connecting the dots” in people’s digital lives via off-the-shelf facial-recognition software. The researcher, Alessandro Acquisiti, was able to match subjects whose photos were posted on a dating site to their profile photos on Facebook. Read More

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Facebook gives users access to more of their data but still records IP address

Posted on Friday, April 20th, 2012 by

Facebook is giving user’s access to more of their data, but the collection of your IP address is still an outstanding issue. If you want to prevent Facebook from knowing exactly where you are, you can block them with a VPN. Take this form of data out of Facebook’s hands today! Read More

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Ask the Expert: Does Secure Browsing Really Keep Me Safe On Twitter and LinkedIn?

Posted on Monday, April 2nd, 2012 by

Q: I have an active Twitter feed and occasionally use LinkedIn for work purposes, but I am unfamiliar with how those sites secure my privacy. I read that both sites have introduced “secure browsing” but what exactly does that mean, and how is it keeping me safer?

A: A secure website has “https” in its URL and has a small lock symbol next to it. It’s used by most banks and online retailers to provide secure transactions. Read More

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