Social Networks - Who Is Accessing and Using Your (private) Information?

SOCIAL NETWORKS – WHO IS ACCESSING AND USING YOUR (PRIVATE) INFORMATION?

Ivana Gjorgievska

University American College Skopje

Skopje, Macedonia

ABSTRACT

Over the past couple of years, social networks have become a part of the lives of the people that use them. People are indiscriminately creating their profiles on social networks, representing themselves in various manners. Through publishing personal information, the users accept the risk of its influence on them – regardless of whether it is positive or negative. This paper presents the results of an online survey about users revealing personal information over the social networks: what is the level of the people's user safety and privacy awareness, as well as the ease of access to someone else's social network user profile, who does not necessary have to be in the friends list. Observing the results presented through graphs, as well as discussing them, a conclusion is reached about the level of awareness of the users of social networks, about keeping their information private and not letting other users use them in any way without their knowledge.

Keywords: social networks, private information, security

I. INTRODUCTION

Social network sites are defined as web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system [1]. The web sites of the social media are a type of Internet communication, the popularity of which increased enormously in the past few years. One can witness the appearance on a huge number of social media, that target their users according to the different characteristics, and

services they offer. The targeted audience can be analyzed

according to some demographic features: age, sex, sexual orientation or according to political views, working industry etc. By creating a user profile on any social networking site, the users disclose various information about them. Many of them are not conscious about the fact that disclosing personal information can affect their everyday lives. Nowadays, one can easily find and use other people's telephone numbers, photos, favorite things, and other private information, without their knowledge.

In this paper, information and data, collected by surveying

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