By now, everyone knows that you should set your privacy settings on Facebook. No sense in ending up like another Kevin Colvin. If you’re going to post party pictures on the day you called in sick… at least do a better job of covering your tracks.
I don’t think Gen Y has an appreciation of the permanence of the internet. Once you upload a piece of your life — a blog post, a picture, a video of your cat dancing on YouTube — it’s online FOREVER. I’ve had a Facebook account for about 3 years now, and it only recently dawned on me that there are pictures of me that I’ll never be able to really delete, as they’re stored in a server farm, in a datacenter somewhere, backed up several times over several hard drives, housed in a building guarded with security and alarms. Mark Zuckerberg owns those pictures as much as I do.
The Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Dear reader, we have probably never met…but you can write my obituary. All you need is the login information for the sites that I use.
Let’s say you got your hands on my Google login. You would learn a ridiculous amount of information about me:
- GMail: who I know and what we talk about
- Google Search: things I’ve thought about and looked for
- Google Maps: where I’ve been
- Google Calendar: a detailed list of what I’ve been doing in the past year, complete with date and location
You could also have the following if you accessed my Facebook:
- Wall and Messages: conversations with people I know
- Photos: evidence of what I’ve done, where I’ve been and with who
- Events: date and location of events I’ve attended (can cross-reference with Photos)
- Relationship Status: who I’ve been involved with, the type of relationship and for how long
- Personal info: birthday, interests, activities, education, work history
Combine my Facebook data with my Google data and forget the obituary, you have enough to write a small autobiography complete with pictures and memorable quotes from friends.
the girl Riot recently got me thinking about signing up for Twitter, and in the process, made me realize the following information about me could be publicly available:
- What I’m thinking
- What I just did
- Where I am
- What I am going to do
Google and Facebook already have an intimate detail of my life up to the present. Twitter kicks things into overdrive and brings strangers into this surreal fifth dimension by letting them inside my mind, as they can read about what I’m thinking about to the second.
Get Over Yourself, Dave
I was one of those people who were vehemently anti-Facebook when it first became available. Like all anti-Facebook people, I eventually learned that resistance was futile and got an account.
My capitulation was fortunate, as Facebook has tremendous value in my social life. I quickly got over the hesitation of posting pictures and writing messages that could be seen by everyone. Once I realized that no, Nigerian scammers weren’t going to somehow use that info to scam my bank account, and no, my body parts weren’t going to be secretly harvested while I was asleep, I became more comfortable using Facebook.
It’s a weird lesson Gen Y is learning. Trade in your privacy for really cool social toys. Sooner or later, there’ll be no such thing as a private life, and things that rely on mystery will be dead. I am a firm believer that blind dates and high school reunions will cease to exist.
Despite all this, I’m giving Twitter a shot. I figure that as long as I make sure my boss doesn’t see my tweets while I’m supposed to be home with the flu, I should be ok.
June 2, 2008 on 3:21 am
Thank you for this post that raise the burning problem of privacy and the social Internet. I think, a lot of communication company may gather a lot of information on you. Your bank knows exactly the money you’ve got, where and when you spend it. Your phone operator knows exactly where you are and who you are talking to.
The question is “why do we accept privacy-restriction?”. I think it is because the benefits are really great.
The exemple of Kevin, does not fit well beacause, in fact, he lied (and did not protect his privacy for this lie). If he had been really sick, all this privacy issue would not have appeared.
S.
June 2, 2008 on 9:58 am
Interesting concerns that all of us have to deal with. The way I get around it is just don’t put up things that I don’t want the world in general to know. If people get on my Facebook the most damaging information they’re going to get is my cell phone number, and I’m not really trying to hide that from people who want to get in touch with me.
On Facebook, Twitter, and anywhere else online, I just don’t post stuff that I don’t want people to know. It’s worked for me so far.
June 2, 2008 on 11:47 am
@Stetoscope
I see what you mean — the point I’m making is that without the internet, he likely would not have been caught. The allure of the internet used to be that you could be anonymous, but that is quickly disappearing.
@Michael
Common sense, you’d think. Us college-aged people seem to have a balance of our parents’ awareness of the importance of privacy, combined with our generation’s love of technology.
But people going online at younger ages develop such a comfort with the web that anything and everything is fair game.
June 4, 2008 on 2:05 pm
@Michael - I agree with you. Only put online what you want and disregard the rest. It has worked quite well for me as well over the last 8+ years since 11th grade in high school
@David if you only came to this conclusion now then where have you been when people get fired for having a blog and get caught lying about their location using plazes (plazes.com).
This is and should be more then common sense by now and those who don’t learn from the mistakes of others are doomed.