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Beware, Facebook and LinkedIn are the worst social media for your privacy
- Researchers at Incogni, a data removal service provider, have discovered that Facebook and LinkedIn are the worst social media for digital privacy while Reddit, Snapchat, and Pinterest are the platforms representing the lowest risk.
- Incogni assessed the privacy risks for each platform according to five categories: data collection and retention, the level of user control and consent, transparency, transgressions category, and user-friendliness.
- Among the variables, Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram got the worst results for data collection and retention, while LinkedIn suffered a poor score from fines and data breach incidents.
- Privacy policies of many platforms are constructed so that people won’t read them since one would need to be at a college literacy level to understand them.
- It is difficult to delete an account considering that the steps required can vary from a minimum of two clicks (TikTok, Telegram, and Discord) to a maximum of six (Meta products besides WhatsApp, YouTube).
- Some platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, YouTube, and Discord retained users' personal information for about 180 days even after the user closed the account.
- Government regulations are not enough to limit the extent of personal data collection, and policymakers need to ensure that violating the law is not more profitable than complying with it.
- As a rule of thumb, users should avoid giving out their real information and create dedicated email accounts instead of signing up with their main address.
- It is also important to review privacy settings and the providers' usage and privacy policies while staying updated with any changes that occur.
- Platforms belonging to Google and Meta make managing privacy more complicated, and users should only share strictly necessary information with the social media company.
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