Wednesday 30 March 2016

Dangers of Social media to Individuals and Businesses

There are many dangers which show themselves on social media:
Cyberbullying:

Sometimes people just can’t leave well enough alone. As an extension of regular bullying Cyberbullying exists only online and mostly in social media. Most victims are children and young adults. They general consensus is to tell the child just to block said bully but getting hit in the face by one stone is just as bad, even to see just one hateful message still hurts a child’s feelings deeply. It’s a true issue that needs to be addressed or at least an effort being made to have an environment where a child is safe from bullies or.

Grooming:

With social media came the realisation of many parents’ worst fears. An environment where anyone can be anything it becomes unsurprising that predators would stalk their pray in such a biome. It has led to much criticism of sites like Facebook as it isn’t hard to pose as a child, befriend another and try to organise a meeting. Despite the severe jail time involved Grooming doesn’t seem to show much sign of stopping any time soon.

Oversharing

While to most users people who overshare are a mild annoyance but occasionally it becomes dangerous. Like posting that you are going on holiday for two whole weeks! Where your house could be robbed by someone who is your ‘friend’ on a social media profile.

IP Theft


On social media businesses especially smaller ones can fall victim to having their content stolen by another. Take for example the 2010 Mobile and Browser game CandySwipe which was plagiarised by King Digital. 

2 comments:

  1. Another danger of using social media would be information in photos posted to your profile page. Sometimes people post photos of their house, street and friends onto social media without thinking about the consequences that might carry. Someone might see that you have some things of value in your home and find out where you live by looking at the photos you’ve posted and use that data to get an exact geological location of where the photos were taken.

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  2. As with anything you do online, another danger of social media is hacking. If someone is able to hack one of your social media accounts they are able to use all the information already added to the account by the users, therefore allowing someone to commit a form of identity theft if they wish.

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