Soacial media networks is secretly spying on us

Social media is probably the most powerful medium of information in today’s age as it has conquered all other alternatives. The degree of its popularity can easily be judged by viewing the stats. The number of users we have on social media websites like Facebook are simply astonishing. According to a general rule, everything comes with its merits and demerits and it’s up to the individuals how they adopt it. Same was the case with social media. It revolutionized the means of communication but a risk that was always associated with it was the security of the private data. A lot of reports and theories have evolved over a period of time that point towards this worldwide danger.

The development of ‘Riot’ was one of the major steps that were taken to initiate this war of secret spying. It was developed by the largest defense firm of the Earth called Raytheon. The major source of income for this organization was the manufacturing of weapons of mass destruction. Submarine-Launched cruise missiles are one of their most popular products. They were contracted to develop something as deadly as these missiles and it gave birth to the Rapid Information Overlay Technology. It was described as the “Google for spies” by ‘The Guardian’.

The mechanism adopted by this software predicts your behavior following your activities on social media. All the check-ins you make are joined together on Google Maps. Similarly, the details about your friends are gathered to make a sketch of your personality. The profile of your social media account depicts about you a whole lot more than you could imagine. Some theories suggested that all this was done in collaboration with the U.S. government. According to government officials, the aim behind this surge of surveillance is to assist police and other law enforcement agencies and boost their efficiency. That’s the reason why some people considered ‘Digital Surveillance’ as the new police.

The amount of information Riot will have about you is totally dependent on your activeness on the social media. This is an alarming sign for all those who love to narrate their experiences on any online social forum. So if you want to keep your privacy intact, you will have to abandon this habit of yours right now. The only way to save yourself from this global surveillance is to cut the supply line of your precious information. Having said that, only a handful of people care about their security and you can judge that by surveying your friend list. You will see that most of your friends have not upgraded their security settings to preserve their privacy. Whether you have the latest security settings or not, you are as exposed as a damaged nerve. About it, Frank Ahearn said,

“When you hit enter on a computer, there’s a digital trace that never goes away. Point blank, that’s the bottom line. You may delete a Facebook account, but it doesn’t mean they delete it. They keep it in their database and, five years from now, their terms of service might change or they get bought by China and they’ll say, ‘Screw this – we’re putting it all up now whether you deleted it or not.’ That’s what people aren’t taking into consideration. It’s like a tattoo: you can’t always remove it.”

Mass Surveillance Programs are not limited to the U.S alone. The UK has a lot of spy agencies who are very active in this field. The fact that UK has nearly 4.2 million CCTV cameras clearly shows the grasp of surveillance on human minds. The true extent of the government interception of social forums like Twitter and Facebook in Britain was confirmed by the most experienced security official, Charles Farr. He told the world that YouTube and Google searches of the citizens are analyzed.

Not only that, emails to and from foreign people are also monitored by the security agencies to ensure safety. What this means in simple words is that all features like ‘Direct Message’ and ‘Personal Message’ are not at all secret. A lot of protestation is observed in various parts of the world regarding this issue but it hardly affects the momentum of the security agencies as they continue to develop more advanced tools to keep an eye on us.