Term of service

Are you aware of the Term of service when you sign up to a social network site?

When we register as a user in social network sites, such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, they will require all of your information that is up-to-date and accurate.

The first thing that these social networking sites required would be the age of the users. If the users are below 13 years old, it means that you are not under covered by the Terms of Service and you wouldn’t get the protections or rights specified in the Terms of Service.

Accurate information from the users is the most important thing in Term of Service, as it is used to protect you from others misusing your cyber identity or to avoid ones’ to have multiple accounts. However, the moment when we share our information, this information may be visible to anyone. Therefore, we have to make sure the privacy settings for our account has changed to all content or comments that we post is to “Friends”, not “Public”.

Your information remains online for a long time. So, we should think twice before we post anything. Facebook allows users to delete their account or content, however, the Terms of service don’t guarantee that all your contents disappear. The content that you posted may be backup by other parties.

Copyright law is not only applicable in the real life, also in the cyber world. We cannot submit any content that we don’t own the rights. Meanwhile, the contents that we posted on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter still own by ourselves. However, by agreeing to their Term of Service, we have granted them license to do whatever they want with your content.

Last but not least, the Terms of Service do not allow us to post any cyber bullying, pornography and illegal activities. All these contents will be ban by the social networking sites.

By knowing all these Terms of Service, we should practice a good behavior while using social network sites. 

Written By:

Liao Shao Jun

Bachelor of Public Relations (Honours)
Tunku Abdul Rahman University College