BANDUNG, unpas.ac.id – Sticker feature ‘Add Yours’ in Instagram is recently becoming the trend between netizens. Instagram itself makes the ‘Add Yours’ feature to create and improve communication and interaction between its users.
‘Add Yours’ feature generally shows a word or question in text column which can be followed and replied by followers, to be further shared in stories.
This new feature is often used as challenge by the users to share the picture of video based on the listed order. Questions like ‘What is your nick name?’, ‘What is the age gap between you and your partner?’, ‘What does your name mean?’ and various other challenges.
However, of these existing challenges, some of them have become hot topic to discuss because it leads to a data theft, especially when it comes to personal data, such as nickname, age, or even handwriting.
Responding to this issue, teacher of Informatics Engineering Department Universitas Pasundan, Sandhika Galih also speaks up. He thinks that the data being spread in ‘Add Yours’ feature is at risk of being misused by criminals, for example for fraud.
Sandhika also emphasized that personal data that should not be spread widely include full name, nickname, gender, nationality, religion, or data that is combined to identify a person; also, personal data which contains personal information, such as health information, biometrics, genetic, kids’ data and others. Even more, information which is considered ‘safe’ is also at risk of being used by cybercrime.
“Using these features in social media actually depends on each individual’s understanding of digital literacy. There are a lot of people being ‘exposed’ to the technology without getting to know the methods and risks; so, they are only hyped about the trend, without even knowing the use of them,” he explained on Wednesday, 1 December 2021.
For some people, sharing their nickname, birthplace, signature, uploading ticket while traveling, as well as updating certain places in the social media might look like trivial things, but these kinds of information is easy to be accessed by other people and might also lead up to social crime.
“People are sometimes not quite aware about this. Right now, there are many companies making nicknames, birthplace, or even personal signature as a key of information safety. If it is leaked, it would certainly be dangerous. We take another example, like throwing away the package without removing the identity containing our name, phone number and address. It is just simple as that,” he continued.
Why does the ‘Add Yours’ feature have change to lead to a crime? Common case often happens around us, like a fraud with the mode of borrowing money. Having owned with only small nickname, the perpetrator can pretend to be an old friend and thus, commit fraud.
So, can the features presented by an application be labelled incorrect if it causes harm to other users?
“Feature, like ‘Add Yours’ for example, is actually only a feature. How to use it depends on the users themselves. Certain negative things occurred might be because of the user is not quite careful in operating it, therefore, do not blame this thing fully on the application and feature attached,” he confirmed.
The main thing is, in using social media, a person needs to understand digital literacy and applies the thought of ‘filtering before sharing’. Because, social media is the thing which can be controlled by its users. (Reta)*
