Social media can be used to help our society evolve, however in the wrong hands they can be a nightmare for many people. Scams, fake accounts or bullying are unfortunately current nowadays.

Who has never received a fake email saying that you have won some prize, that your order “FedEx or UPS” is stuck somewhere, telling you to connect to your social media or to your bank account with the pretext of solving some problem. This phishing email attacks are on the rise, 25% increase in threats evading security (Davis, s.d.). These scams are truly frequent, and spam can’t filter all of them.

Fake accounts on social media are created every day for many purposes, some to get your email address, others to try to trick or scam you somehow (Drolet, 2019). According to Europol, fake accounts are mostly created to advertise, offer or sale counterfeit products, in some cases they try to wire money or make you reveal sensitive information (europol, s.d.). Despite social network companies try to uncover such cases, more fake accounts are created then those that are found and closed (Fung & Gardia, s.d.). Some people were hacked and had photos or messages posted on their social media. This can be quite serious, and even more serious if you are a public figure followed by millions. Offensive or racist messages can be posted (Charles, s.d.), and some people were blackmailed because otherwise hackers would publish private photos or videos (Stokel-Walker, s.d.).

Amber alert is a way to use social media as a noble cause, “967 children were rescued specifically because of Amber alert” (amberalert, s.d.). However, unfortunately there are fake amber alerts on social media making people complain. Some were furious, criticizing the system or even asking to disable it on their mobile phone (Rodrigues, 2019). This system could be discredited or become unreliable because of those fake alerts.

Even if we have to be cautious, there are many ways for social media to improve our lives. I’m thinking about messages sent to our mobile phones warning us of potential fire or risk zones by the Civil Protection (Valente, s.d.), or how in France the use of media radio messages and the social media hashtag #DonDuSang on twitter asking  people’s help after Paris terrorist attacks  (Parthonnaud, s.d.) was helpful. Even if we are advised against phishing by authorities, the blood donation centers were overflowed by people willing to help the victims, and some even waited in lines for hours in front of hospitals to donate their blood (Vantighem, s.d.).

There are so many ways of using social media to help, save, alert, and surely new ways will appear, that even if we have to be cautious about what we read and hear it would be a pity if we wouldn’t use these powerful tools that can improve our lives and make our society evolve.

Written by Hélder Magalhães

Bibliography

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