Who are you sharing with?

I have been doing some thinking and research into the privacy of Facebook profiles. At school we were given regular internet safety and awareness talks to inform us about the potential dangers of social media and the web. But, is everyone aware of who exactly they are sharing their posts and photos with?

There are many privacy settings available for users to make use of on Facebook, but some unless you actively know about them and change them they are not in action. Due to the number of professional contacts I have on Facebook I am very careful about what appears on my profile. Also, It is now extremely common that potential employers may look up candidates on social media to get an idea of your character and professionalism. For these reasons the majority of my account is viewable only by people I am directly friends with. However, I have my profile photo and professional dance photos public on my account so people can search for me and request to connect with me. I have some friends who have chosen to use a different name for their social media profiles for professional reasons and some with separate acocunts for 'professional' and 'personal' profiles.

I found it a little unsettling that people were able to tag me in photos and posts that would appear on my profile without my consent in advance which could potentially harm my online reputation. Therefore, I now receive a notification about tag requests which I have to accept before it appears on my profile. I am now completely responsible for what is on my Facebook page.

Every day 2.7 billion likes are given ad 300 million new photos are uploaded onto Facebook. I have been looking into what happens to the rights of our photos when we post them.

“…once something is posted or uploaded onto Facebook it becomes Facebook’s property. So if the original photographer uploaded the photo first onto Facebook and then others have taken it from there and uploaded it to their pages or profiles, this is legal and within policy, there’s nothing I can do about it unfortunately even if they are taking credit for the photos.” (https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2015/05/13/does-facebook-really-own-your-photos/)

Everytime I log onto facebook I am bombarded by viral posts friends are sharing. But when the original post was made was that person aware of how many people would end up seeing it? It takes a matter of seconds to create posts and share posts and potentially your posts can be shared and reposted without your knowledge or consent.

Deep in the terms and conditions of facebook this issue is highlighted but we are all guilty of skipping reading small print! Should facebook make its users more aware of the possible dangers of sharing things they may not want the world to see?



(Statitics taken from http://www.thecultureist.com/2013/05/09/how-many-people-use-the-internet-more-than-2-billion-infographic/ )