Thursday 29 September 2011

Facebook and your personal privacy.

I found this cartoon - thanks to failbook, I had to post and comment on it because it is just so astute.


So true! I have certainly noticed over the past year or so how aggressive Facebook, Gmail, Blogger and many other sites have become at asking for more private information from me "to benefit my experience of their site'.

I don't know about you, but I like Facebook. I can briefly glance at the page and find out what my friends have been up to and lessen my guilt at not calling enough of them to catch up. But why would I want my phone to msg me every time someone wants to make public that they are going out and can't decide whether to go formal or casual. (All they really want is for me know they have been invited to some big do.... knowing this vital information can wait.)

The problem is the explosion of cold calling pollsters has diminished lately because of sites like facebook, amazon, ebay, etc. Every time we do anything on-line the information becomes theirs to sell and make more profit on top of the ads they now run. A friend of mine made a very funny comment about Sarah Palin on Facebook a while back and within a week started getting updates from the Palin camp. There is only one way this can have happened - a program that scours the pages of Facebook to categorize everything written into groups that can be sold off for profit to people who are looking to hit you with ads to buy things or support causes. That's why my phone number and facebook will never meet.

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