Social Media Apps:The Real Issue of Privacy

Social Media Apps: It's like unlocking your phone, then giving it to a total stranger

That's right - you wouldn't do it.

However, the moment we install any social media app, that’s precisely what we end up doing.

But it’s fine because they assure us that everything will be, and we’ve somehow placed our trust in them.

Almost immediately, they begin suggesting:

• Random individuals whom they think we might know through our friends.

• Products they believe we be interested in based on our age, profession, location and even gender.

• Sponsored pages, websites, and other networks they manage that might catch our interest based on our browsing history, likes and clicks.

Social Media Apps: Ever wondered how a locksmith gets you into your house when you've locked yourself out? 

When you question the security of your data and messages, you're reassured with:

"Don't worry – we use End-to-end encryption (E2EE), which means your messages are encrypted on your device and can only be decrypted by the recipient's device. We do not have the keys to decrypt these messages, ensuring that only the participants in the conversation can access the content."

This sounds comforting, and you continue using the app, confident that your messages, photos, videos, and voice messages remain private.

But wait a moment:

• Their engineers created the E2EE.

• Their engineers generated the decryption keys.

• The messages travel from your device to the recipient's device through? Yes, that's right - their servers.

Still feeling reassured?

Privacy has always been based on our having trust in the provider

However, that trust has consistently relied on our ignorance of the activities occurring behind the apps and their true function.

The social media apps were never developed to enable us to 'socialise' with friends and family, to stay connected to family or to post about places we've visited or what we had for lunch.

Their primary function was and always will be to create personal profiles for each user so they could be targeted with precise advertising that ultimately generates billions in revenue for the app company.

Isn't it time we took charge of our data? We think so.