Studies Indicated that Social Media have been violating people’s privacy, giving arise to virus attack, identity/money theft, merciless humiliation of people and crippling of citizens’ human freedom.

• It is no doubt that social media is a great invention of the Internet era, however, it is also capable of hurting and destroying people, even the whole society by violating people's privacy.

Tyler Clementi

      Social media, which has been broadly defined to refer to “the many relatively inexpensive and widely accessible electronic tools that enable anyone to publish and access information, collaborate on a common effort, or build relationships” (Murthy, 2013), have brought about many incredibly fascinating conveniences to people’s life. To be specific, social media facilitate open communication, leading to enhanced information discovery and delivery; they allow people to discuss ideas, post news, ask questions and share links with others. The benefits of social media or internet in general can go on and on. While every coin has two sides. With social media and Internet playing a more and more important role in people’s life, their disadvantages are becoming more and more acutely felt, among which the violation of social media on people’s privacy has caused the greatest concern. There are increasing amount of people, especially after the infamous Snowden-NSA incident in 2013, fell that their privacy has been violated either by hackers or being monitored by the government. 

       Numerous people are being harmed by the privacy security issues of social media, and would take extreme measure of action accordingly. In 2012, New York Times reported the story of Tyler Clementi. After Tyler discovered his roommate was secretly steaming his romantic interlude with another man, he jumped off George Washington Bridge at only age 18.      

• Social media increased the chance for people to be defrauded, get virus attacks, receive online harassments, and be monitored unwillingly.  
The violation of people’s privacy can result in the following problems:
1. Social media have opened up the possibility for hackers to commit fraud and launch spam and virus attacks.
2. Social media have increased the risk of people falling prey to online scams that seem genuine, resulting in data, identity theft or money.
3. People's private words, actions, conversations or photos are stolen and then made public – “public without consent, public without context, and public without compassion” (Lewinsky, 2015), to damage the reputation of somebody or hurt his or her feelings on purpose.
4. Social media has been used by powerful governments to monitor their potential enemies or even their citizens. As a result of which the essence of human freedom has been severely crippled.



Like Lewinsky, a lot of people have experienced online harassments. A study done by Pew Research Center indicated that 27% of people have been called offensive names online; 22% have had someone try to purposefully embarrass them; 8% have been physically threatened or stalked; 7% have been harassed for a sustained period and 6% have been sexually harassed. 
To attract more people, social media websites always ask would-be users to sign in by giving detailed personal information in the first place. For example, applicants of website users are required to give information about their name, address, educational background, email address, their telephone number, and zip code. Other websites, also for luring more customers, encourage people to apply for a gift card, with the condition that they will give their personal information. People are likely to forget about the matter after the application, but they will soon notice that spam keeps coming to their email-boxes, and before long, their email-boxes will be filled with advertisements, which is such a nuisance!
Also, some people would pretend to be a son or a girl friend who has met with a traffic accident and is in urgent need of money. More often than not, only when the money has been sent to the given account could the sender realize that he or she has been taken in. This should have happened only because private information has been exposed in social media, giving the bad guys chances to take advantage of these innocent people.
Some people are making use of social media to achieve their hideous purposes. Take China for example. Nowadays, President Xi has launched a war against corrupt officials. People have used social media to reveal to the public the crimes of some officials. Pictures of an official wearing various expensive wrist watches are posted on social media. And the official was finally invested, arrested and then found guilty. But some people tried to use social media to slander their “enemies” for their hideous purposes. Also in China, in April, this year, a businessman Guo Wengui who has been had a feud with Hu Shuli, the former editor of Caijing in China, started a slanderous accusation of the latter’s wrongdoings on social media in China. Hu did not give in, and she fought back, revealing the bad behaviors of Guo on the internet, and in the meantime launched a lawsuit against the man.
Lewinsky’s experiences are also a case in point. When her affair with Clinton was known, it was a time when social media began to walk into people’s life. For the first time in history, the affair was known all over the world the second day, owing to the role of social media. She considered suicide at that time because the social media have magnified the shame and humiliation to an unbelievable degree. But she was strong enough to live on, while another young man did not. Tyler turned out to be one of the victims of the ruthless violation of people’s privacy. He died a tragic and senseless death as a result of the hostile exposure of his wrongdoings by the social media network.
If the above are isolated cases of privacy violation, the most harmful violation is the surveillance of people by the government through social media. Snowden’s revelation made it known to the world that the government has the capability to monitor all the people in all places all the time. This reminds people of George Owell’s novle 1984. Although people do not see monitors in their rooms or working places, they are effectively monitored as long as they surf on the internet or use their cell phones. People are not aware of the fact that The Internet has a record/file on everyone.
• Measures we should take account to prevent privacy violations: always use secured internet, and keep softwares up to date. 
It is high time that we took effective measures to deal with this problem. A Computer Science major graduate student, Tom gives the best ways in the expertise's point of view on how to keep our online privacy safe.  
In facts, as long as we make sure that we always use secured internet, keep our softwares up to date and be cautious about things we download from the Internet, it is extremely hard for even professional experts to gain access to our privacy. 


I think the following actions should be taken to address the problem.  On the one hand, social media, if they do want to win the trust of people, they should draw the attention of the users of social media to the serious situation they are in and help to guarantee people’s online security and privacy. Besides they should not only implement proper laws to ensure the proper use of social media but also severely crack down on those who violate the laws, whether they have done so intentionally or otherwise. On the other hand, as far as ordinary people are concerned, they should forever be on their guard whenever they avail themselves of the conveniences brought about by the social media. Only when all the parties concerned make joint efforts can we expect to solve the problem and ensure a healthy use and development of social media in the long run, making sure that the world is not a hostile place for us to live in.   
Bibliography:
1. Hou, Wenchang. “The man wearing expensive wrist watches”. http://news.jcrb.com/jxsw/201209/t20120925_953652.html. 2012.


2. Greenwald, Glenn. “Why privacy matters.” http://www.ted.com/talks/glenn_greenwald_why_privacy_matters?language=en
3. Lewinsky, Monica. “The price of shame.” http://blog.ted.com/imagine-walking-a-mile-in-someone-elses-headline-monica-lewinsky-speaks-at-ted2015/
4. Murthy, Dhiraj. Twitter: Social Communication in the Twitter Age. Cambridge: Polity. pp. 7–8. ISBN 978-0-7456-6510-8. 2013.