The use of social platforms and personal data protection — An exploratory study

The social networks are used by millions of users. Depending on the social media platform, members may be able to contact any other member. In other cases, members can contact anyone they have a connection to, and subsequently anyone that contact has a connection to, and so on. Some services require members to have a preexisting connection to contact other members [1]. According to [2], the number of unique visitors on some social platforms is: Facebook - 1,500,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors, YouTube - 1,499,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors, Twitter - 400,000,000, Instagram - 275,000,000 Visitors/month, LinkedIn - 250,000,000 Visitors/month. The main scope of a social network is to interconnect persons with common interests. They can also be used in business. The paper is a study about social media and consists of an original research based on a questionnaire with more than 300 of respondents. Some of the investigated issues are: the security in the social networks, the scope of the use of social networks, personal data protection, identity theft, the dependence of the use of social media, etc. The results of the research provide a basis that is useful to understand the importance of the use of social networks and also the personal data protection in such platforms. The paper also provides useful findings for the online community regarding the use of social platforms and the protection of person on such virtual medium.