Digital Home Thoughts: Social Networking Services Know Who You Are

"In order to use any facebook application, the user must agree to the terms of use, which include accrss to their personal information. Decide not to download the application? Too bad. If your friend decides to use an application, that platform can access your personal information."

Security, privacy and convenience all rarely work together. You usually have to compromise on at least one thing in order to have the others. This is especially true with social networking sites such as Facebook. In some ways, it really makes me wonder why people are complaining about privacy on Facebook and its brethren. The whole purpose of sites like Facebook is to share information, not hide it. You put things up on Facebook so that your friends, family, and maybe even the whole world knows what you have been doing. My general policy follows a quote supposedly from Benjamin Franklin, "Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead." If there is something you do not want anyone to know, do not post it, do not record it. Keep it tucked away in that little box you have under your bed. Assume that anything you send on the Internet can be copied, altered and redistributed at any time. Assume that anything you do on the Internet is recorded in one fashion or another. When it comes to technology, there is very little in the way of privacy anymore.