"Facebook does a pretty good job, from a security standpoint, if you're talking about encryption," Emilee Rader, an associate professor within the Behavior, Information and Technology Lab at MSU, said. "Facebook servers are encrypted, which means that other people who are snooping in on the network wouldn't be able to see the content of what your'e communicating about."

Rader said this is a fairly standard Internet practice today. She was quick to point out that Facebook only transitioned to full encryption in 2010, four years after it opened itself up to the public.

Websites that rely on profiles and using private information, such as Facebook, are generally quick to adapt to new security threats. It's bad business to have a client's information easily accessed. Yet in spite of the efforts by various web companies, people have routinely faced severe consequences for damning personal information leaking onto the Internet.

"Prior to everyone having an online portfolio, background checks were only performed by employers to look for criminal history," Phil Gardner, director of the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at MSU, said. "It's raised the question of, 'what's my private life?' With everyone on Twitter and it's easy for something you say in private to get out to thousands of people and potentially complicate the hiring process."

For any MSU student pursuing a career that might require a personal website, such as marketing or journalism, they are repeatedly warned about maintaining a professional appearance online.

This includes everything from having a respectable email account, a conservative looking profile picture or making sure to remove any photo putting the student in a compromising position.

"We teach students that there's no privacy on the Internet, much as we'd like there to be," Gardner said. "The problem is that it doesn't always link to you, if you're tagged in a photo that can still be found. So it's about making smart choices."

What's important to keep in mind is that online security is a two-way street, requiring companies and their users to meet halfway to ensure their privacy.

"There's only so much that technology can do to protect people," Rader said. "The thing that people often say is that the user is the weakest link."

In spite of this, action at the federal level is being taken to look into empowering average Americans. The Federal Trade Commission issued a report in 2014 examining data brokers — companies that buy and sell information on users in order to help advertisers target their products more efficiently — calling for increased transparency of their practices.

Most recently, Tom Wheeler, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, announced privacy regulations for Internet service providers. The goal of the new proposal is to allow users to weigh in on the type of information gathered about them and how it's used. Wheeler is expected to formally propose his plan on March 31.