After Data Breaches, Facebook Wants to Be in Your Living Room

Last month, Facebook disclosed that 50 million user accounts were compromised — with the data then being sold on the dark web.

ICYMI, and additional 15 million accounts were compromised late last month — only this time — more detailed user information was stolen.

Betanews noted that “15 million people have had their names and contact details exposed. 14 million users had significantly more details revealed, including username, relationship status, religion, hometown, birthdate, places they have checked into, and recent searches.”

This is on the heels of the Google+ breach that exposed most data held by any Google+ user for over three years. Google’s response was to run a 7 month media campaign and then shut down the service, rather than fix it.

Today’s social media user should be aware that their data, use history, pages they’ve engaged with and comments that they’ve made — may be searchable, for sale or already hacked — in a landscape of social media platforms that are sharing far too much of your private data.

More secure options like Peepeth.com (secure-er Twitter), Steemit (secure Facebook that pays you for content) exist — however their lack of a broad-based audience (if you’re on it, your mom and grandma won’t be) leaves them as secondary choices for most social users today.

Teens and Gen-Z folks seem to get the risks, as only 10 percent of teens say they use Facebook often.

But it’s important to remember that these platforms often times influence people to continue to use them — in ways that are not safe or protect their data simply due to their ease of access and popularity.

In 2018, consumers may forget data leaks like Stikcam — or that your favorite kids’ toy Hello Kitty had lost all of your kids' data three years ago. But it’s important to keep in mind leaks from products like Alexa and Google Home and Amazon’s own employees should be a reminder that your living room is where you should draw the line with home privacy.

Why? Because IoT (Internet of things) devices like Facebook Portal are the next generation of connected, social media enabled devices — which when they leak (because hacks are almost an inevitability of these days) could have innocent enough video that is compromising — as it’s something you never meant the world to see.