Sailing through the world, which is now full of social networking sites and smartphones that have every bit of person information about you not as smooth and easy for a person. The biggest problem about the information sharing on social media sites is its collection, distribution and sharing. Therefore, it is very important to asses, which information to keep with yourself and which one to share around. On social networking sites, the common information shared among are name, gender and date of birth.
Many people provide additional information like photographs, comments and other additional information. Though most of the information can be kept hidden from the public, yet the companies enjoy the preference of viewing and sharing that information for the marketing and survey purposes. For example, by using Facebook credentials you partly expose your data to come into the public domain. Social media apps on smartphones, disastrously, give access to personal phone call information and physical location of the owner and this way reveals more information to others. On Apple Inc’s iPhone, apps without permission cannot locate and access GPS location coordinates a procedure which may become necessary for everyone, following the system and the procedures.
Personal information is the basis of internet economy shared by marketing and advertising companies. Hundreds of companies, gather personal data about Web users, and mix it with other information and then resell it on a heavy profit. The main problem with this type of data sharing is that if it goes into the hands of insurance companies or banks, they can use them for decision making purposes with whom to do business with.
It is not expected from the social media sites to have a privacy policy, companies do have. However, websites for having any such privacy policies can be prosecuted under law. Sites that accept payment card information need to be more vigilant with respect for encrypting and protecting the data. Medical records and some financial information is subject of stricter rules.