When you go online, all your information is tracked. Businesses and marketing companies collect a large quantity of your private information when you visit a social media platform.
The best way to protect your online privacy from social media data harvesting tools is to get a YouTube proxy, which is a reliable proxy that you can employ to ensure your private data stays safe. Continue reading about how you can protect yourself from data breaches on social media sites.
Why You’re Data Is Collected
Nobody really takes the time to read through the privacy agreements or check the privacy settings when they create an account on a social media platform. A social media platform will hide how they use your data behind carefully phrased jargon and fine print that’s unclear about exactly what they do with your data.
Many of us believe our data is kept safe by these platforms, this is not always the case as most social media platforms sell your private data to marketing companies and businesses as a side hustle so that these businesses can funnel certain ads and marketing campaigns directly to you. This is where they generate most of their income.
Social media sites collect a variety of information, including:
- Name, location, and IP address.
- Email address and phone numbers.
- Content that you’ve uploaded, liked, or subscribed to.
- Links you click on from, in, and to the social platform.
- Facial recognition information.
- Metadata from where and when you log into the social platform.
Data Breaches on Social Media Sites
Since 2005 to date, we’ve seen the seven most popular social media sites hacked, and cyber criminals compromised the data of up to 1.9 billion subscribers. Below are the top three breaches which caused the most damage. Others include Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and MySpace.
Snapchat
In 2013 this platform was hacked by SnapchatDB.info, and 4.6 million users’ personal information, including their phone numbers, was made available for public download. Snapchat made headlines again in 2019, when employees were caught spying on users using a software known as Snaplion.
Also known as the Russian Job, in 2016, over 32 million accounts were breached by hackers. LeakedSource reported that a hacker (known as Tessa) compromised users’ email addresses, passwords, and usernames.
Facebook has the worst record when it comes to data breaches. The social media network accidentally exposed six million users’ email addresses and phone numbers in 2013. According to the company, a software glitch happened when friends were downloading the contact information of their friends and inadvertently got more information than they were meant to see.
This was nothing compared to 2018 and 2019 when the social media network suffered seven (or more) data breaches where the information of approximately 1.9 billion subscribers was compromised. Breaches include, but aren’t limited to, hackers exploiting poor software security protocols, software glitches, improper security and storage of user passwords, and user data stored on multiple public servers.
Buy a YouTube Proxy to Protect Your Data
When you employ a YouTube proxy, it directly protects you from malicious hackers. It will also ensure that any social media platform or application you use can’t harvest your personal data.
The proxy server will act as an intermediary between you and the YouTube social media site. It cloaks your IP address and ensures that your private information stays out of reach from social media data harvesting tools and malicious hackers. You’ll be able to bypass blocks and remain anonymous.
Final Thoughts
We must accept that we’ll be tracked every time we use the internet or an application. In addition, we can conclude that social media platforms or any other entity that collects our personal data are incapable of keeping the information they ‘steal’ from us safe. As users, we must take responsibility upon ourselves to stay a step ahead of these intrusions.
The best advice we can give you is to be extremely careful of what information you share online. Additionally, you should use two-factor authentication as far as possible for all your online accounts and use different very strong passwords that include special characters, numbers, and are longer than eight characters.
Since most tracking software is ‘invisible’ to us, we must use the technology available to us to ensure that our privacy is protected. We highly recommend you buy a YouTube proxy and employ it on your device as soon as possible.