DeepDotNet 
In the decade that has passed, the world has changed dramatically. Social media is at the forefront of virtually every facet of our lives and we can’t help but wonder what life will be like in another ten years.
It used to be that a person’s personal information was relatively safe; at least, if you wanted to find out where they lived there would have been no need to go online or call them on their phone. Nowadays, it’s a different story: if an individual so much as posts a picture of themselves on Instagram or tweets something about their dog, they’re revealing their home address to anyone with internet access – and this has become an even greater concern with the rise of social media sites such as Facebook.
This may seem like a very big deal to those who are not in the tight-knit communities that social media sites like Facebook are able to create, but it’s not. In fact, the average person doesn’t even care about it. It’s easy to assume that the more online activities one gets involved in, the more risk they are running of having their personal information stolen or hacked, and this is usually only true if you have been getting into deep online trouble for some time. If you join a social media site with no history of being a troublemaker (or don’t want to be one), your information is reasonably safe.
What people should be more concerned about, however, is the privacy of their information once they’ve joined a social media site. If you search up any other person on the internet today and see what comes up, you will most likely find a large amount of negative information that has been posted by other users. This information isn’t even necessarily fake; it may be true and it may be true in an extremely unflattering light. It is very easy for someone to find out very intimate details about another person (and for nothing more than throwing around hateful words) simply by searching for their name.
With the rise of new technology, privacy issues have become an even greater problem. Because many of these social media sites are run by a single company – or several companies in a very close-knit community – they have access to so much information about each of their users. If someone is searching for someone’s address online, they could find all their information for that person’s personal and business life; if someone is searching up other people’s personal information, they have access to everything about those people.
For those who are concerned about their online privacy, it is probably best to avoid social media sites entirely. It is also a good idea to stay away from any sensitive information on the internet; while most people do a pretty good job of keeping their personal contact information private, things like their relationship status and more can be easy to find if someone looks hard enough.
