Social media users need to be cautious with the online data

By Peter Zemeske

Facebook’s stock dropped a massive 19 percent on Thursday, according to their stock quote and summary published July 27 by Nasdaq. The decrease stems from users doubting Facebook’s ability to protect their data.

Facebook has been under scrutiny for their privacy policy. On April 10, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress to answer questions about users’ data following a massive privacy breach.

“I’m quite confident given our analysis it is not more than 87 [million accounts affected by the data breach]. It very well could be less. But we wanted to put out the maximum we felt that it could be as soon as we had that analysis done,” said Zuckerberg during an April 4 interview with CNN. As a result of the Cambridge Analytica data breach Facebook is ramping up its security force.

“Today, across our safety, security, product and community operation teams, we have about 10,000 people who are working on safety and security generally,” said vice president Colin Stretch, during an Oct. 31 Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing.

“We’re committed to investing more and doubling that number by the end of 2018.”

Although seeing a company own up to their mistakes while actively working to fix them is great, it doesn’t mean users should become any less cautious when it comes to their online presence. Many people sign up for social media accounts without reading the privacy policy detailing how their data is used on the site.

Despite any and all efforts corporations make to defend their users data, some responsibility still lies with the individual. Data attacks can happen anytime and social media users should keep this in mind when sharing statuses and photos. No matter what, content posted on social media is vulnerable to online attacks.