We need to protect our information on Social Media

Currently, for most tech companies, their major revenue comes from online advertisement. In order to how to deliver the advertisement more efficient to the right target, companies like Linkedin and Facebook start to collect a large variety of data from the society. They start to analysis people’s geographic location, friends, education and the place they usually go etc. For marketing A/B testing purpose, the more information you collected, the more accurate you will predict.
Recently, Facebook started to launch their new product called Facebook Local App. Based on its descriptions – Keep up with what’s happening locally—wherever you are—whether you’re looking for something to do with friends this weekend or want to explore a new neighborhood. The key idea will try to help people know what’s happening in their neighborhood. Everything looks good and interesting. However, this app’s average score on Apple Store is only 3.3 out of 5.
Here are the reasons: first is people started to care about their privacy. And there are lots of similar apps on Apple Store. Why they need to choose this one. Facebook already has most of their information, they do not want to let Facebook know everything about them. Second and the most important, once you start to use this App, Facebook will start to get your information more accurate. For example, on your Facebook account, you only need to put which city you live in, for me, my Facebook account only shows I live in San Francisco. However, once I start to use this app, Facebook will know which area in the city I live in and what is my life patterns. For me I am a Pokemon Go Fan, they will know where I am going every weekend, how long I will be in these locations. I may feel I was watched by someone every day.
Based on what we learn so far, Facebook gets huge benefits, because they can directly charge their advertisement fees to their clients. Because they will deliver the content to people based on area. They may keep sending the good restaurants around the areas where I usually go. For me, I will increase the times to go these places because I have no choice which saves me time as well. But, if they use this information for another purpose such as using the information to develop another Apps or research? We do not know how they store and use our data. We all have the similar experience that when we start to put our contact information to apply for credit card in credit companies like Visa or American Express, we will get a lot of calls from many banks as well. Why, because credit companies share our information with the banks. Banks use the information to find us and ask us to open an account with them.
There will be the similar situation on Linkedin as well. Once we change our title to currently looking full-time position, we will get a lot of email or request from the staffing companies for job hiring.
Above all, the technology does change our lives, but we need more rules to protect us and avoiding being bothering from them as well.