Photos on Facebook

Most people join Facebook to keep in touch with friends and family. One of the biggest advantages of Facebook is that it helps you to get in touch with long lost friends. Unfortunately, in the process Facebook has also become the default photo and video sharing site for most of us. However, there are some very compelling reasons as to why you should avoid uploading personal photos and videos in Facebook.

Photos on Facebook, Awkward Moments

In this article, we will look at some of these reasons.

Most of us would be playing some game or another in Facebook. We would also be using one or more of the applications in Facebook. While signing up for these, often we allow these games and applications to access our profile information. In the process they also get access to your profile photographs. Although Facebook policy clearly prohibits these applications from using your profile pictures, there has been several instances recently where applications used profile photographs for generating their ads. As soon as it came to Facebook’s notice they withdrew these ads. But, why should we unnecessarily expose our privacy to such risks? It is always better to avoid uploading personal photos and videos in Facebook.

1. Today Facebook has over 800 million active users. There is no way to know what kind of people may be present in this community. You definitely do not want your personal pictures and videos to fall in the hand of criminals who may even morph them for malicious intents. This is another reason to be careful and avoid Facebook mistakes.
2. Videos uploaded in Facebook can quickly turn viral. This may be beneficial for a business which is trying to promote its brand or services, however if you are an individual who loves your privacy, then chances are quite high that you can get overwhelmed by all the unwanted publicity and attention. It is not always comfortable when strangers start discussing finer aspects of a video that you have uploaded, especially if your video garners negative publicity and scathing comments.
3. Your workplace colleagues or your clients may be your friends in Facebook. A silly photo or a party video uploaded in Facebook can actually cause consternation among people in your professional circles. This can adversely affect your career growth and in extreme cases clients may even refuse to deal with you in future.
4. When you upload group photos or videos, you are not only exposing yourselves to risks around Facebook as mentioned above, but also exposing everyone else who has posed for the picture. If something goes wrong your friends in the picture may soon avoid you and it can even lead to legal hassles. Make sure that your friends are comfortable with their photos being shared on your wall and further being tagged in the pictures. After all, there may be lot of your friends who may be complete strangers to another set of your friends and this would mean that their pictures are viewed by strangers.

One of the ways in which you can avoid Facebook risks is to limit your friends to only people whom you know and trust. An old childhood friend whom you haven’t been in touch with for the past several years could have turned out to be a very different adult from the person you knew years back. Also, you need to ideally avoid uploading photos and videos on Facebook totally, but if you cannot do that then at least make sure that you restrict access to these to only that set of people whom you are sure you want to share them with.