http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/11/15/faceb...
In the above article, Dan Gillmor at Salon warns about a couple of issues
One if them is the part about the conversations feature which includes a complete archive of everything you’ve ever electronically exchanged with your friends and loved ones on Facebook: What a treasure trove for divorce lawyers and law enforcement.
( To which I will add, anything TG related, even if it was not intended for your freinds may be available to them, from the sounds of it. The following are excerpts from the article. Read the entire things for more. HHH)
In a feature that Facebook thinks is great -- and will thrill law enforcement and divorce lawyers -- every conversation will be captured for posterity, unless users delete specific messages or entire conversations. Do you assume that the people with whom you communicate are saving every text message and IM? You'd better.
That's only one of the things that makes me cautious about the service. Facebook's privacy record is spotty enough already; trusting the company to archive and protect my communications? Not so likely. Gillmor says: “We should all be uncomfortable about moving more and more of our cyber-activities into the embrace of a single company – and I don’t care if it’s Google (one reason I rarely use Gmail) or Facebook or anyone else.
And the notion of letting Facebook essentially capture my identity online is not just disturbing, but dangerous. As noted, the company has shown repeatedly that its assurances on privacy are at best treated with skepticism. But that's only part of the issue. If you let Facebook become the method by which you are known online, you are giving it permission to start charging you for the privilege someday. The only party who should own your identity online is you.
Facebook has federated its "Like" button all over the Internet, so it's not trying to entirely capture your browsing and communications, but in the process it's turning its service into a glue -- replete with extremely granular data about what you do online -- that should make everyone cautious about putting so much power into a single enterprise's control. Easy to use, which Facebook certainly is, does not equate with good for you in the end.
Comments
Controlling your online identity
>> If you let Facebook become the method by which you are known online, you are giving it permission to start charging you for the privilege someday. The only party who should own your identity online is you.
In the long run, the only way to do that is to own your own domain, most of which (depending on the provider) allow you to create e-mail addresses.
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
And, even that...
And, even that, CAN be used against you in a court of law (or the court of public opinion).
Anne
Facebook today...
...other social networks tomorrow. Let's face it, when 1:13.7 people across the planet use the site, who's founder claims "Our mission at Facebook is to help make the world more open and connected", it's only going to be a matter of time before other social networks follow suit and try to wrest control of your online life. It's also worth remembering that your information isn't just shared between you and your friends - as the free-to-use networks are generally supported by advertising, it's a fair bet that at least part of your online profile will be shared with companies - your name may be excluded but as has been demonstrated with Facebook, they don't always make sure the information they sell on is insufficient to identify you (e.g. in Facebook's case, including the internal user ID, which with a bit of scripting can link that information to your profile and your name).
Of course, although they nominally allow you to make stuff "private", in reality that runs counter to their mission. They apparently see nothing wrong with putting your entire life in the public domain... and while people may protest and moan, while they're gaining about 100m more users per year, they're hardly likely to do anything about it!
Generally speaking, you shouldn't put anything on Facebook you'd be overly concerned about if it leaked to your other social circles.
As for other services, Twitter's in the public domain anyway and every tweet is archived (although old ones are currently excluded from search results to improve server performance - that may change in future); emails are more private but can be intercepted by any server en-route to the destination without either sender or recipient being aware (think of it as the electronic equivalent of a postcard); and I'm not sure what the polices are of the various Instant Messaging networks or Skype towards storing information.
Generally speaking, with pretty much any social network, it's wise to take heed of the old warning caveat emptor.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't...
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
The take-away...
The take-away from this is no different than most other places. Don't put ANYTHING in writing that you can't afford to have become public knowledge.
A good example is how viral Willow Palin's FB comments on Facebook - yesterday - have become...
It doesn't matter whether you write it in Facebook, Here, in e-mail, or on old fashioned snail mail. Unless you can guarantee all copies of the statement can be destroyed, someone can find it. They can find it and use it to your worst advantage.
Sucks, but that's just the way it is.
BTW - what you say, whether you know someone can hear you or not, can also come back to haunt you.
So far, your thoughts are still yours, unless you happen to have a nosy telepath reading them.
Anne