So, I read the New York Times article, have seen some of the groups on Facebook about privacy, read the horror stories about not being able to delete all your information and Facebook invading your privacy
and I've gotta say ...
You know, maybe I'm more sensitive to this because I'm an old school Internet user, but I've been feeling the need lately to contribute a public service announcement: You really should be aware that any time you put anything on the Internet, ostensibly protected or not, you are taking a risk that that info will be available to, well, everyone.- secure place. In fact, it's a prime spot for targeted advertising and information gathering, and the more info you post for free online, the more effective the information-gathering process is. There is no free lunch, here or anywhere.
When you type I'm getting married on someone's Facebook wall, well, guess what? It's fairly likely that within 24 hours you're going to start seeing advertisements for wedding stuff over there on the left of your Facebook screen, and then again at the bottom ' where Facebook makes its money. Every little word you type and submit to Facebook's servers is going to be scrutinized by some team. Google works the very same way. They want to know what you're all about, what you're interested in, what you're doing. Then they want to take that information to a potential advertiser and say, Look! We know of 10 000 people who are getting married in 2008
and we can flash advertisements right on their screen. They tend to log in every afternoon at 4 p.m.
and they often get here from this Web site called 'theknot.com'! Want to compete with that Web site? Want to buy an ad to promote your dresses / honeymoon trips / invitations? Cool.
Facebook doesn't hide anything in its privacy policy. The policy basically says, This isn't private. They also say, We're going to archive this on our servers. They're doing nothing wrong. In order to pay all the programmers and designers and run the servers that make this a place where you can write cute graffiti and send various gifts (many of them advertisements themselves) and click on photos of the cute boy or girl in your Bio class to see where he or she lives, they take all the free information you're giving them and make a profit from it. -
you automatically grant
and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant
to the Company [Facebook] an irrevocable
perpetual
non-exclusive
transferable
