Social media threat! Don't have an account? Even then your privacy is at risk - Here is how

For those of us worried about our privacy, this new study on Facebook and Twitter will come as a rude shock. Why? Because our privacy is at risk even and that even applies to those of us who don't even have an account. Citing the study published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, an ANI report said how information moves on social media platforms, becoming a powerful factor in protest movements, national elections, and the rise and fall of commercial brands.

Surprising part of this study is that it informs that even if you are off these platforms, your privacy is not safe! Further, it shows that if a person leaves a social media platform, the online posts, words of their friends still provide about 95% of the potential predictive accuracy of a person's future activities. This aspect comes to fore even without any of that person's data being online, the report said.

According to the report, the team of scientists from the University of Vermont and the University of Adelaide, gathered more than 30 million public posts on Twitter from 13,905 users. With this data, the scientists reportedly showed that information within the Twitter messages from 8 or 9 of a person’s contacts make it possible to predict that person’s later tweets as accurately as if they were looking directly at that person’s own Twitter feed.

James Bagrow, lead researcher of the study, quoted as saying, “when you sign up for Facebook or another social media platform you think you’re giving up your information, but you’re giving up your friends’ information too!” 

Lewis Mitchell, a co-author on the study, was also quoted by ANI as saying, “There’s no place to hide in a social network.” 

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Findings of the study showed that privacy on social media is like second-hand smoke. Researchers reportedly revealed that it’s controlled by the people around you.