Social Networking Sites and Security Concerns

This study aims to understand how Social Networking Sites (SNS) are changing the methods of social connectivity and what it means to be public. Social Networking is the most popular online activity worldwide. Over the past several years, the emergence of new paradigm in the internet have been seen, online social networking sites, which provide internet users to communicate and collaborate with family, friends, social groups, and other community by using social media tools (i.e.. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and Youtube). Social networking sites are not only to communicate or interact with other people globally, but also one effective way for business promotion. Social networking sites have been rapidly adopted by children and, especially, teenagers and young people world wide, enabling new opportunities for the presentation of the self, learning, construction of a wide circle of relationships, and the management of privacy and intimacy. As users are enjoying this new style of networking, privacy concerns are also at fracting increasing public attention due to reports about privacy breaches on social networking sites. There are also concerns that social networking increases the likelihood of new risks to the self, these centring on loss of privacy, bullying, harmful contacts and more. One side these sites provide to communicate with our dear ones on the other side it creates platform for many cyber crimes. However, they can also pose serious security threats to users and their organizations. This paper go through the amassing history of online social websites, characteristics of social networking sites, effects and also discuss the security risks (sfrength ,weaknesses, opportunities and threats) and suggest the anti-threats strategies and visualize the future trends of such hoppy popular websites.