Social Networks, When I was preparing this article for my intervention in the radio program, I remembered the episode of the Black Mirror series entitled Shut Up. I don’t know if you’ve seen it (spoiler eye). The protagonist is the victim of blackmail. Someone, through malicious software, has entered your computer and recorded your privacy. From that moment on, you will have to give in to the constant demand that you do things more and more insane if you do not want the images to be disseminated among all your contacts.
I was watching this episode and covering my computer’s camera. The bad vibes took over me. On the occasion of the news these days about the spying of Pegasus I have once again remembered this chapter of the Netflix series.
Does Pegasus sound familiar to you? It is the most famous spy software in the world. The mobiles of several Catalan politicians were attacked by means of a WhatsApp vulnerability that this tool uses to sneak into devices.
Through Pegasus, your mobile will receive instructions from a remote location: capture those messages, connect the mike, take a photo, tell me the location. That is, you will carry a mobile in your pocket that will spy on your life.
People as powerful as Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, have fallen victim to Pegasus.
Table of Contents
Twitter And The Millionaire Scam
But do not go looking for such advanced hacking systems. Twitter has recognized this July that hackers have convinced some of its employees to help them hijack accounts. And you don’t count just anyone. The profiles of Joe Biden (Former Vice President of the United States), Elon Musk (founder of Paypal and director of Tesla), Bill Gates or Barack Obama, among others, have been hacked to promote a massive scam of bitcoin (cryptocurrencies).
A Twitter spokesperson has explained that the company is still investigating whether the employees allegedly hijacked the accounts or whether the hackers had access to the tool as the accounts were hacked using an internal tool on Twitter.
TikTok And Chinese Spies
TikTok, the social network for short music videos that is revolutionizing the youngest, has been banned in India accused of being a spy app from China.
The application has even surpassed Instagram in popularity in countries like the US, UK and Spain. Think that it already has about 700 million users.
Its users are young and highly engaged. Two-thirds of tiktokers worldwide are under 30 years old, and in the US, 60% are between 16 and 24 years old as a curiosity to tell you that the top 50 content creators on TikTok have more followers than the populations of Mexico, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia combined.
But this month of July has also turned into a real nightmare for TikTok which is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese Artificial Intelligence startup backed by SoftBank, which has already been valued at 140,000 million dollars.
Anonymous, a hacktivist group, has said that Tik Tok is a malware operated by the Chinese government to carry out mass espionage. Anonymous’ reaction came following a post by an engineer who claimed to have “reverse-engineered” TikTok and other applications, including Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
According to Anonymous, he had never seen something so invasive and problematic in terms of capturing user data, the terminal he uses and his behaviour patterns.
TikTok also faces another threat: the long-awaited launch by Instagram (of Facebook) of its Reels tool, which will allow its users to record 15-second videos and put music on them, among other things, in a similar way to how the function works. Duet on TikTok.
Facebook will seek to subtract users from the Chinese network as it did with Snapchat when launching Instagram Stories. Reels is currently in the testing phase only in Brazil.
Facebook, Instagram And WhatsApp The World In Your Hands
In the hands of Mark Zuckerberg, who is the omnipotent owner of these three applications and the owner of a large part of our digital life. And what do social networks do with my information? This is the most repeated question among users of these platforms after it became public that Cambridge Analytica, an online data analysis company, used the profiles of 50 million people who use Facebook to influence different political campaigns, including the presidential elections. From the United States.
Think that Facebook asks for the mobile number, with which it can relate profiles and WhatsApp accounts. For its part, it is easier to create an Instagram account if you log in with your Facebook account. So judge for yourself.
And Do You Know What Cookies Are?
And I no longer tell you anything if I think about Google and cookies. Do you know what cookies are? A cookie is a tiny computer file sent by websites that are stored in our browser, and that collects data about us.
The job of cookies is to “tell” brands and companies how we behave on the Internet to place ads according to our tastes and interests. They are like surveillance cameras placed all over the Internet, so they can know which pages we enter, and therefore, create a profile of your personal tastes. They can also record your searches in search engines like Google to know your tastes and needs. In this way, they have more information about us than we do.
I who started my digital life in 2005 creating content of all kinds in blogs, video, photos and social networks, I am convinced that the network knows more about me than I do. What do you think?
Also Read : What Is A Full-Funnel Strategy For Facebook Ads, And Why Do You Need It?
