Business model

The operation of technical platforms for social media services costs money. However, since these are usually offered free of charge, the operators finance themselves through donations (e.g., Wikipedia) or through advertising (e.g., Facebook). However, advertisers are only interested in financing the platforms if they receive an economic benefit. In addition to the opportunity to place advertisements, this usually consists of receiving user data from visitors for evaluation in order to advertise in a more targeted manner.

Problems with social media

When using social media services, a large amount of usage-related data is generated that can be assigned to persons or groups of persons and is of interest for advertising.

When visiting third-party social media services, a cookie (a small text file) is often left on your computer or smartphone, which can be read again by the operator of the site, but also by third parties. Via cookies, which are sometimes stored for years, it is easy to track the surfing behavior of visitors.

If cookies and other data that you publish or unconsciously leave behind on the Internet are used cleverly, there is thus a risk that third parties will recognize where you surfed and for how long, what you want to buy, where you live or what your hobbies are. This, in turn, can also be used to select you as a target for so-called social engineering. If you know a lot about you, you will trust them faster!

Data protection law stipulates that Internet offers must contain clear information about which of your data is processed and how it is passed on to third parties. This is not implemented by all social media services. If you do not find an understandable explanation of data protection with the offer, you should be doubly careful about whether you want to use the service and what data you leave there.