Survey Revealed That 50 Percent of People Keep Their Social Media Accounts Public And Open

According to a recent Viasat Savings survey, 50 percent of respondents keep their social media accounts in private mode while the remaining half said that they keep their social media accounts open and public. Additionally, a lot of individuals keep their social networking accounts and the accompanying applications as a form of enjoyment.

When the respondents were asked why they keep an application rather than uninstalling it, most of them replied that they needed those apps to stay in touch with their loved ones. However, the generation Z respondents said that they keep particular apps because they use those apps to sign in to their other online accounts.

The Generation Z audience considers social media as online tools while other generations consider social media as a tool to stay connected. The study also discovered that 71% of respondents to the survey checked their advanced privacy settings after joining a particular social platform.

It is a good sign that users take control of the privacy settings when they get an opportunity. 50% of respondents updated their privacy settings last year because of privacy and security concerns as last year is notorious for data breaches and cyber-attacks.



Still, experts say that we should be more diligent about our privacy. This week, the personal data of over 100,000 social influencers was compromised due to the breach of Preen.Me, a social media marketing company. Moreover, RiskBasedSecurity’s report suggests that over 250,000 social users may have had their data entirely exposed on a deep web hacking forum.

The leak was discovered on June 6 of this year and the personal data of over 100,000 affiliated influencers was held for ransom. KnowBe4’s security awareness advocate, Erick Korn stated that breaches of this magnitude cannot be ignored. He added that considering the volume of data lost in this breach, the organization should contact victims as early as possible and they should provide a statement related to the breach.

Experts at KnowBe4 warned that doxing or releasing personal data related to the addresses, mobile numbers, or even employers of the people has been looked upon as a grievous offense in the cyber-security community. Korn warned that this breach has released the records of 253,051 individuals that contain information like Facebook accounts names and friend lists, which is a gold mine for social engineers. The data could be used to create fake accounts, spread malware, or perpetrate various other scams.

Read next: How people use location services and social media check-ins
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