Social media and its extremely adverse effect-part-1

Social Media and its extremely adverse effects-  ( PART-1 )

Social media are internet based communication and mutual interaction technologies.These are computer net work created for exchanging multimedia rich contents between users and specially pictures and video clips.Social media sites are amongst the most widely used technologies on the internet eg Face book,Google,Linkedin,and twitter etc.These sites have hundreds of millions of daily users and the number is ever increasing with the advent of smart phones,3G and 4G network.People enjoy using online social network to interact with families,friends and other people through sharing of experiences,pictures,videos and other type of information.On the other hand social media also has a dark side which is ripe with hackers ,fraudsters,online predators,and intelligence agencies;all capable of using online social network as a platform for targeting their next victim.Unfortunately most users are unaware of the security risk associated with online social network that mainly include breach of privacy,identity theft,malware,fake profiles,black mailing and sexual harassment.

According to the recent studies ,many social media users expose intimate and sensitive personal details about themselves,their friends,families,personal relationships and organizations,either by posting photos or by directly providing information such as home,office,address,phone number,current activities and location.More over Face book users tend to accept friendship request from unknown people ,who are some times friend of their friend .By accepting these friend requests ,users unknowingly disclose their private information to total strangers.This information could be used maliciously ,harming users both in the virtual and in the real world.These risks increase manifold when the users are children or teenagers  who are more exposed and vulnerable than the adults.Horrifically in some cases cyber bullying through social media can lead to catastrophic results like committing suicide by the effected children.

However it is felt that due to dividends render by the positive attributes of social media and the necessary to monitor own wards ,families in parental capacity ,the use of this technology is inexorable by the family members.Accordingly in order to safe guard sensitive personal,national,and organizational information every people need to be groomed and made aware of the risk and ways to mitigate threats related to its usage.The primary object of this article is to provide best practices for the secure use of social media.To educate common people and their families on the risk associated and to suggest additionally security measures for the use of on line social network eg Facebook,and sites offering sharing of pictures movies like whats app,viber and you tube etc

Today cyber bullying has become quite common in which the attacker can utilize  the social media to spread rumors about the victim and share pictures ,videos usually collected through the social media contents carelessly uploaded by the victim or his friend.Cyber bullying usually effects children and teenagers.In 2015 ,an on line survey,including parents from 24 countries ,discovered that 13% of the parents reported that their child has been cyber bullied.According to the survey result ,the majority of children experienced this harassment while widely using on line social network sites like Face book,you tube etc.Horrifically such cyber bullying unnoticed by the victim's parents ,some time resulted in committing suicide by the victim.

( Continue, for more detail see next part-2 )