Researchers at Incognilooked at the top 15 social networking apps and found that these platforms severely mishandle our data and privacy. Meta’s Facebook and Microsoft’s LinkedIn were the worst platforms when it comes to user privacy protection. Reddit, Snapchat, and Pinterest were the platforms with the lowest risks of privacy breaches. Researchers looked at privacy risks on each platform across five categories.
The first category was data collection and retention. Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram received the worst results in this category. Another category was user control and consent. In this category, default privacy settings, privacy settings, and visibility options were analyzed. Meta’s platforms Messenger and WhatsApp were the worst in that section. TikTok was also among the worst apps in this category. There are a lot of data points these apps collect and share with third parties.
Another category was the transgression category, which means fines and data breach incidents. X, LinkedIn, and Facebook didn’t get a good score in this category, but Reddit, Telegram, Quora, and Discord received positive scores. In terms of transparency, LinkedIn and Quora were the worst, while Snapchat and YouTube were the best. Meta’s apps and YouTube were the worst apps in terms of how easy it is to understand their privacy policies and the steps required to delete an account.
The researchers say that it seems like you now need a college degree to understand social media apps’ privacy policies. Researchers also found that, in addition to complex policies, there are a lot of steps users need to take to delete an account. To delete an account on Telegram, TikTok, and Discord, you just need two clicks. But for the deletion of accounts on Meta apps and YouTube, it takes a maximum of six clicks. After you leave a platform, your data remains there for at least 180 days. The platforms that delete the data after 180 days are Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Discord. Telegram deletes user data just a few days after account deletion.
In recent years, many countries have implemented laws about user data and privacy, but they are not enough. The only way these platforms will comply with the law is if violating the law becomes less profitable than complying with it. Meta has already faced many legal fines because it continues to breach user privacy. The only way users can make social media platforms safe for them is by reviewing their privacy settings and making sure they only allow apps to see information that is necessary.
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