In the News
Facebook news coverage has not been kind lately thanks to mounting evidence of misuse of personal user data. In Cambridge Analytica Could Have Also Accessed Private Facebook Messages, Issie Lapowski discusses the possibility that Facebook personal messages were obtained by political data firm Cambridge
Analytica without user consent. Lapowski explains how a download of the app, This Is Your Digital Life, by a user may have provided Cambridge Analytica with access to that user’s personal messages with friends, a fact previously undisclosed by Facebook.
Our Take
Social media accounts contain vast amounts of personal information, and private message may contain substantially more. As people begin to use accounts to log in to multiple services and to communicate directly with one another, there is increased likelihood that a breach in one place provides personal information across multiple other accounts. The privacy of your own information is increasingly contingent upon the privacy of those you interact with, especially on social media platforms and other messaging services.
Recommendations
So how can you protect your your profile and information?
- Take care when posting text or images to semi-public apps, even and especially in private messages to other users: nothing on the Internet is truly private, and it lives forever
- Do not share information on your profiles that can be used to answer security questions for password resets on other sites
- Make sure that any websites you are uploading or downloading content from have a green lock next to the URL, indicating use of HTTPS
- Refrain from downloading apps that you are unfamiliar with or that you cannot verify are secure
- Consider using encrypted messaging solutions such as WhatsApp or Signal in order to limit access to your private communications