Adam McLane

Social Media Safety and Security

Social Media Safety and Security

Uh oh. Something went wrong with several social media applications late last night.

Hundreds of millions of people worldwide were unable to use Facebook and Instagram for around an hour today.

Hackers from online group Lizard Squad have claimed they shut down the two sites at around 6am GMT – but Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire says it was just a technical fault.

Both sites, which have a total of 1.5billion users, appeared with error messages in the United States, Europe and Asia for around an hour.

The social media blackout also affected the dating mobile app Tinder, as well as AOL Instant Messenger and Hipchat.

Source

It was amusing to watch as Twitter went into full-on State of the Union mode, the hashtag #FacebookDown adding faux drama and humor to the occasion.


And while I joked about it there is the potential that this could be more than old man Zuckerberg is letting on.

Here’s what I know:

  • Facebook is a giant target with 1.4 billion monthly users. (20% of all humans!!!)
  • They are due to release their quarterly earnings report tomorrow evening.
  • Lots of people share lots of personal information on Facebook.
  • Even more use Facebook to login to a lot more apps.

Let’s say it really was a technical glitch caused by the rollout of some new features. (Snapchat and Twitter also rolled out new features today, they indeed do have to keep up with the Social Media Jones’s of the world.) That’s perfectly possible and my only real reason to think otherwise is based on their being a publicly traded company, getting hacked would do bad things to their stock right before their earnings report… there’s a lot at stake for them. Enough to lie? Maybe.

But let’s say Facebook was hacked and while the site was offline hackers ran away with a billion or so people’s personal information. What’s a user to do?

Just to be safe, I’d recommend these two courses of action:

  1. Change your Facebook and Instagram passwords today. It only takes a few minutes and it never hurts to change things up.
  2. Turn on 2-factor authentication on any and every application you can. If you use Facebook to log into a bunch of things, do yourself the favor and turn this on now.

If you’d do that you’re good to go either way. 

Tech Tuesday Questions

Rachel asks, “Why did you write the post, ‘Why You Should Delete Snapchat?’” 

As someone who talks to parents and teenagers a lot about social media, I’m actually fairly slow to judge an application. I really dislike black and white answers. I originally wrote the post because at several different speaking engagements parents asked me what I thought about Snapchat. I put them off for several months because I was still analyzing it, so I would say “Keep an eye on my blog. When I know more I’ll write about it.”

So, a few months later, when the guys started suing one another about who came up with the idea and a bunch of their emails ended up in the public record, I was able to dig around some more. Snapchat was the first time I’ve ever told people… just don’t use it. And I’ll reiterate the two main facts of why I don’t recommend people use Snapchat.

  1. They lied to their users from day one about what does and doesn’t disappear. I wrote about it in August 2013 and in May 2014 they reached an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission where they admitted they mislead users.
  2. They are not good digital citizens. You see glimpses of it my original post, how they speak about women, things like that. But bigger than that and far more important. The operators of Snapchat know that a percentage of their application is used in the course of crimes. (Child pornography, prostitution, drug trade, etc.) But, unlike basically every other social media company, Snapchat does not make their data available to law enforcement to help put criminals behind bars. Every investigator or prosecutor in the United States knows this is true. And to me? That they would knowingly hold data that could put people in jail for terrible, terrible crimes… usually against their own target audience of young women… well, that’s reason enough for me to stand by my post and say, “I think every user should delete Snapchat. You might use it for something fun, but people are getting hurt. Bottom line: Your [probably innocent] activity on the app is helping to fund other people getting hurt.“

Julia from California writes, “Which is safer, Facebook or Snapchat?” 

I wrote back to Julia asking for clarification on what she meant by “safer.” As in “safer doing what?”

But here’s the answer: Neither are safe.

When you use any social media application you are taking a risk. It’s in the applications best interest to convince you that your data is safe, that what you think is private will stay private, on and on. But never forget that this is a perception. Ultimately, anything you post online is public. As soon as you hit the “send” button on your phone or computer you have given up control of what happens to that message, picture, or video.

That message could get intercepted. It is most definitely being monitored by, at least, the country you live in. (But potentially other governments) The person you send the message to could share it with others or use it against you. And the application itself that you are using could get hacked or sold or otherwise compromised.

I don’t say that to freak anyone out. I say that to remind you, as a user, that the best thing you could ever do before hitting “send” is to make sure that what you are saying is OK to be seen publicly if it ever becomes public. If it isn’t? Don’t send it.

 

Tech Tuesday

Have a tech question for Adam? Each Tuesday I write a tech post. Submit your questions using the form on my site’s right sidebar. It can be about anything tech related, from social media to networking to life at home with wireless devices.

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