Question

Social Media platforms play a very important role in our today's life. For this task, you need to select at least 2-3 most popular social media (e.g. Facebook) platforms and identify what are the security and privacy features available for their users. Compare these platforms based on security and privacy features and recommend your preferred platform.

Answer 1

List of Most popular social media platforms is:

1.Facebook

2.Instagram

3.Twitter

4.Whats App

5.LinkedIn

6.Pinterest

These platforms play a very important role in our day to day life. For this task, I select Whats App, Facebook and Instagram.

Security and privacy features available in these platforms is discussed here one by one.

1. Facebook

Privacy

1.Who can see my stuff: Facebook provide us a feature where we can select the audience to whom we want to share our information. Sharing can be limited to a group of people. And the privacy for a post can be changed in future also. User can control who can see the past post also.

2.User can control the audience for the Facebook profile and timeline. User can put a limit to profile picture and cover photo i.e. who can see the image. And who can add me as a friend.

3.User can also control who can tag me in their post.

4. Activity log helps us to find out what we have done in the Facebook account like whom picture we like, the comments done by us, etc.

5. User can also control who can contact me, who can message me.

6. User can block another person. Other pages, message can also be blocked.

7. There is an option which shows the apps connected with your Facebook account. Means while login to other websites and apps we usually login through Facebook account. So, here we can see which apps are using my Facebook data.

Security:

1. Set a unique password for securing the account.

2. Facebook gives us login alerts to tell about the recent login from another device i.e. unrecognized login.

3.It provide its user two factor authentication. In this there are several options like SMS is sent to your registered mobile number. App password can also be used along with Facebook password.

4.If Facebook account is looked out, there is an option to select some friends so that they can help user to unlock his account.

5. It shows the location, from where you are logged in.

2. Whats App

1.Whats App use end to end encryption to protect the message and calls.

2. Messages are stored in the memory of device. They are not shared with third party application.

3. There is a group privacy setting. In this user can choose who can add him in the groups.

4.Touch ID, Face ID and Fingerprint can be used to lock Whats App.

5. Here two step verification provide security.

7.Read Receipt: In this user can select whether to show sender that the message is read or not.

8.Last Seen: In this we can choose, who can see my last seen i.e. last time when I used the Whats App.

9.Profile Photo Privacy: Limit can be put on, who can see my profile picture. Like my contacts, everybody, nobody.

10.Status Privacy: Who can see my status. We can select some contacts from my contacts who are going to see my status.

11. Blocking: One can block someone whom you don't want to see the message and call in future.

12. You can delete the message if it is wrongly written.

3.Instagram

1. Password should be chosen wisely to protect the account.

2.Two factor authentication can be set in order to protect the account. Here OTP or SMS is used for verification.

3.There is a option where you can check that email received from Instagram is genuine or not.

4.Here, the list of websites or apps that are connected to Instagram account is shown. So that, you can control who which app or websites can use your personal information. These apps asked you initially whether they can access your personal data present in Instagram account.

5.For privacy, Instagram account can be made private or open. If it is open you can change privacy settings to make your account as private account and then check the list of followers you have.

6.You can see a list of who is following you and a list of whom you are following.

7. You can block a user, either mute someone or restrict someone.

8.You can select audience for your Instagram stories.

9.You can block someone to put comment on your post.

10. Activity status can be set as hidden. So that no one knows when you are active on the account.

11. User can pause unwanted notifications.

Comparision of these platforms based on security and privacy features is shown below:

All these provide all the features to share information and to chat. But these social networking sites have their own purpose. Facebook is used mainly for sharing information, Whats App is used basically to send messages, Instagram is used mainly for posting pictures.

Number	Facebook	Instagram	Whats App
1.	It is planning to give end to end encryption.	Till now messages are not end to end encrypted. They are working on it.	It gives end to end encrypted messages.
2.	It demands more information from the user while account creation time and takes more time for setting up security and privacy settings.	It is easier to manage security and privacy settings here. As it takes less time.	It also takes less time.
3.	The use of Facebook is vast in nature like sharing post do comment, so it has more privacy settings. It is used for making social circle.	Its privacy setting is less than Facebook and greater than Whats App.	In this no sharing of post or comments, so it has less privacy settings, because there is no need of that privacy settings. It is used for messaging
4.	Here someone can stalk your account by seeing the information provided by you.	Here, if you set your account as private then no stalker can stalk your account.	There is no concept of stalking in Whats App as here is less information which Whats App set like display picture and status only.

Recommend platform is:

For messaging Whats App is recommended.

For privacy of your data Instagram is recommended. As there are only two types of account private or public

For making a vast social circle Facebook is recommended. Here privacy depend upon the privacy settings you have made as compared to Instagram. You can select privacy for each and every post individually.

All have their own purpose. We can use them according to our need. No one can be said as better or worst.