Social networks are part of the daily lives of millions of people. In the last ten years they have grown exponentially. This generated the theory that social networks were created by the governmental intelligence agencies of the great world powers.
These platforms have long been the subject of particular suspicion on the part of many people. The doubt arises when they object that the reason they are free of charge is entirely “altruistic”.
Certainly, social networks are spaces where many people leave data of all kinds. This data ranges from the most basic identity data to political trends and consumption patterns. It is this source of data that makes them a desirable source of information. And of information susceptible to be used for purposes that are not always lawful.
Facebook in the lead
Myth or reality, the truth is that the best known of these networks around the world, Facebook, was created by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 as an internal way of communicating among students at an American university. But in a short time it became so popular that today it has more than 2 billion users around the world.
This immense popularity, with users logging on to it on average more than once a day, further underpins the belief that the secret services make use of this information, even with the consent of their managers, who may be cooperating directly with these intelligence agencies.
In fact, Facebook, along with Google, is a key player in the world order, according to its detractors. They claim to know everything about the users. They also say that they use the information not only for commercial but also for political purposes.
One reality is that the algorithms used by social networks allow us to know a lot about the people who use them: that is why they are considered a great weapon with which we can not only guide consumption but also define campaigns and even influence political results. Y
Facebook
has already been the subject of complaints that it listens to us through our cell phones.
Snowden and classified documents
American Edward Snowden, a former CIA and National Security Agency (NSA) employee, disclosed in 2013 top-secret classified documents from several NSA programs, including the Prism and XKeyscore mass surveillance programs.34567.
The uproar was at its peak: in the same year, the Senate Intelligence Committee undertook to investigate the way the NSA operates. However, the damage was already done: the leaked documents revealed how the agency hacked into the servers of nine Internet companies.
The purpose of this incursion was to monitor Internet communications through the Prism surveillance program. The nine companies included Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.
The complaint stated that Prism gave the NSA and its British counterpart GCHQ access to emails, chats, stored data, voice traffic, file transfers and social networking information.
Many people’s suspicions were confirmed after Snowden’s revelations: our data on the Internet is not secure.
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