Privacy Policies of Social Media Sites Case Study

Privacy Policies of Social Media Sites - Case Study Example Nonetheless, numerous individuals who may not be friends and relatives have an interest in the information person post on social media. People aiming to steal identities, scam artists, debt collectors as well as stalkers and companies in search for market advantage have resulted in using social media to collect information concerning the consumers. The organizations that operate the social media platforms are also gathering various forms of data concerning their users with the aim of personalizing their services as well as selling advertisements. Social media sites have different degrees of privacy offered to the users in that for some of the sites such as Facebook, users are encouraged to provide their actual names along with other personal information through their profiles2 (Magdalinski 149). This information typically includes dates of birth, telephone numbers as well as email addresses and locations. Other sites give users the chance to provide additional information about themselves that includes their interests, hobbies, preferred films and relationship statuses. Nonetheless, there are sites like Match.com where most of the users favor anonymity and therefore connecting to their real identities may be difficult. Regardless of this, people may sometimes be identified through face re-identification and studies that have been done on two social media sites have demonstrated that through overlapping fifteen percent of similar photos, profile pictures with the same pictures over multiple sites may be matched to clearly iden tify the users. Security along with privacy that is linked to social media sites are essentially issues of behavior and not technology. With an increase in the amount of information that is posted on social media, the higher the amount of information that is accessible for potential compromise by the people whose intentions are malicious. The individuals who provide personal information about themselves or people they are  associated with, knowingly or unknowingly, are at more risk.