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Understanding of Privacy in Social Media

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1) PII stands for Personally Identifiable Information. Give examples

Personally Identifiable Information which is commonly abbreviated as PII refers to any data
or information that can be made use of in order to identify a particular individual [ CITATION
JAK19 \l 16393 ]. It refers to that piece of data which when used alone or is used with other
relevant information can identify a particular person. It is essential for an individual to
protect the PII in order to ensure the personal privacy, the data privacy as well as for the
security of the personal information.

Examples of personally identifiable information might include the full name of the
individual, the social security number of the person, the license number of the driver,
person’s personal bank account number, passport number, financial information as well as
the personal medical records of an individual [ CITATION JAK19 \l 16393 ].

2) Define “privacy”. What are the privacy problems?

Privacy may be defined as the person’s ability or the ability of the group to successfully
seclude the information related to them and hence have the right to express themselves in a
selective manner. Privacy within the social media services refers to the provision of the data
privacy that involves the right of the person to have the control of the their personal
information being used by the third parties and displayed by others by making use of the
internet.

Privacy has become one of the most significant issues for the consumers and the
organizations. Most of the privacy problems and issues are the results of the large amount of
personal information being assessed by the social media sites each day. Moreover, there are
various technologies that are required in order to steal the information of the user in order to
intrude their privacy (Xu, et.al, 2014).

3) Do you agree the statement “Privacy is dead”? Why and why not?

Due to the technological advancements and the increasing information sharing capabilities of
the internet, the privacy of the information is redefined. Therefore, the statement “Privacy is
Dead” is not 100% true but yes the privacy is yet not fully dead but is slowly dying. The
benefits provided by the social media sites and social networking mostly outweighs the risks
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of the loss of the privacy. The increasing use of the internet has made it very easier to quickly
share the personal actions and information of the individual with billions of people around
the world [ CITATION Tre19 \l 16393 ]. Therefore, it is important for individuals to understand
the risks as well as benefits of the technology before making excessive use of it. And
personally I believe that Privacy is still not completely dead and we need not to get over it.
Privacy is not impossible to achieve but it requires more knowledge and understanding. If
more consumers and individuals understand the importance as well as the risks of the loss of
privacy through their personal data, we will soon be able to overcome it.

4) How can we protect privacy?

Privacy has been a common concern with the increasing use of the internet and furthermore
the increasing capabilities of the internet to share the personal information of the individual
with billions of people all across the globe. Privacy has become rare and hence it has become
important for the individuals to protect their privacy and ensure the security of their personal
information. Privacy can be protected by ensuring the following:

 Do not share everything on the social media profile: the person who actually cares about the
privacy and is concerned about the privacy of the personal information need not to share each
and everything on the social media profiles as the more the information is shared by the
individual online, the more is the chance of privacy violation.
 Do not share financial information or social security number with the third parties:
Individuals need not to share their social security number with anyone unless it is extremely
important. Also it is advised to share only the last four digits of the social security number in
case someone wants to do a security check or background check.
 Hardware needs to be password protected: Every person needs to set a password for their
laptops or computers in order to protect the loss of the information in case the same gets
stolen. IN addition to this, the laptops or computers. Mobiles should have anti-malware apps
in order to protect the information stored from cyber criminals.
 Ensure private browsing: Individuals need to enable private browsing so as to ensure that no
one has the access to your personal information. Even online advertising companies gathers
information about an individual by collecting information about one’s online activities.
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 Do not answer the security questions truly: The thefts can easily find out the answers by
going into your details on the internet and hence it is advisable to lie when answering
security questions asked by few websites.
 Use two-factor authentication: This implies that every time an individual needs to log into
Google or social media account, he needs to enter a special text or code being sent to some
other device such as phone etc. Two-factor authentications works effectively in keepings
others from accessing one’s personal information and personal accounts. However, it is time
consuming but in order to ensure the privacy of information, two factor authentication is
worth the time consumed.
 It has been observed that most of the credit card companies do sell the personal data of the
customers to other companies and hence it is advisable that privacy can be protected by
making more use of the cash instead of electronic money.
 Keep the social network activities private: It is advisable to person to keep their personal
information and other data private and control the safety of their information by enabling the
rights to ensure who all can have the access to your information on the internet. This can be
done through simple settings being provide by each social site [ CITATION Chr17 \l 16393 ]
5) What kinds of methods or algorithms can be used to achieve Differential privacy?

Differential privacy makes sure that the data attacker cannot learn anything more about a
person that they can learn if the information record of the person did not exist within the data
set. There are different methods or algorithms that can be used in order to achieve differential
privacy. The simplest among them is the Laplace mechanism which is one of the algorithms
used for achieving differential privacy. This algorithm does post process the results of the
queries such as the counts, means or sums in order to ensure that they are differentially
private [ CITATION Cha17 \l 16393 ].

References
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Cabot, C., 2017. An Introduction to Differential Privacy. [Online]

Available at: https://www.infoq.com/articles/differential-privacy-intro/
[Accessed 9 April 2020].

DesMarais, C., 2017. 11 Simple Ways to Protect Your Privacy. [Online]

Available at: https://techland.time.com/2013/07/24/11-simple-ways-to-protect-your-privacy/
[Accessed 9 April 2020].

FRANKENFIELD, J., 2019. Personally Identifiable Information (PII). [Online]

Available at: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/personally-identifiable-information-pii.asp
[Accessed 9 ApriL 2020].

Timm, T., 2019. Online Privacy Isn’t Dead—If We Fight for It. [Online]
Available at: https://gen.medium.com/online-privacy-isnt-dead-if-we-fight-for-it-ef586a27d9b7
[Accessed 9 April 2020].

Xu, L., Jiang, C., Wang, J., Yuan, J. and Ren, Y., 2014. Information security in big data: privacy
and data mining. Ieee Access, 2, pp.1149-1176.