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Stipe Grbić
Stipe Grbić

Posted on • Originally published at stipe.xyz on

There's no privacy on social networks

This might sound so obvious to people who know how the Internet works, but I think to quite a lot of people this might come as a shock. All the privacy settings on social networks and forums are worthless. Let me explain why I think so.

Whenever you share a thought or a picture on the web, remember that it can be re-shared by anyone else who has access to it. No privacy setting can prevent another person from taking a screenshot or copy-paste your post. Remember Snapchat’s revolutionary feature of auto-destroy messages? Users quickly learned to bypass it with a simple screenshot.

This is also a reason I don’t believe in closed social networks and rather share my thoughts publicly on my personal website and on my Twitter account. I don’t want to have a false belief that my stuff is protected by a social network. As a consequence I don’t share anything I’m not comfortable to share with the public. Remember this next time you want to share something more private and find yourself adjusting the privacy settings of your post.

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