If you haven’t heard, Facebook has been in the middle of a firestorm of controversy regarding recent changes to what people can and cannot see when they visit your profile as well as when search engines check you out. Below is a visual depiction of what is “now public”. For the most part, it’s everything as a default.
Click to Enlarge (source: Moveon.org)
Chances are that if you haven’t made changes to your personal settings on your Facebook page that pretty much everything you do is available for public consumption. Are you okay with that?
I am. Nothing I post to Facebook has any bearing on what I do or who I am other than what I am prepared to display publicly. I came to grips long ago that if you or anyone else puts something online in any form or fashion, it can eventually be brought to light.
In other words, I’m okay with Facebook and the changes. I don’t like them, nor do I support what they are doing, but on a personal level I feel safe.
Should You Care?
If there are things about yourself that you don’t want people to know, here’s a tip: don’t put it online. Anywhere. Don’t let your friends, family, enemies, or anyone else put it online either. Think of the Internet as a a notepad and each little bit of information you put on it as a sheet of paper on that pad. Now, imagine you’re in a hurricane.
The way that data travels, swirls, and relocates on the Internet is going at hurricane-level speeds. You wouldn’t write down your social security number, date of birth, address, and mother’s maiden name on a sheet of paper and let it loose in the wind. You never know where it will land or who will get the information. Now, imagine that, while traveling through the hurricane, your data-filled sheet of paper is magically copied over and over again, joining the swirling winds and landing in different places.
That’s what’s happening when you Tweet, update your Facebook status, comment on something, or any other activity. Even “secure” things are not so secure — unless you have a 22-character password made of gibberish that only you know, any “secure” data you have out there is subject to hacking and subsequent spreading.
Nobody is safe. It’s all doom and gloom.
That is, unless you’re safe. It’s all doom and gloom unless you protect your data in the neurons of memory within your brain and nowhere else — that’s the only way to know that nobody can get the information (yet).
The answer to the question of whether or not you should care is easy: if you keep your data protected by not putting it out there, you probably do not need to care. Regarding Facebook, say only what you want the world to know. Even if you change your settings to private, assume that someone is hackable. Think of it like this – if you have 50 Facebook friends, can you say for a certainty that none of them can be hacked?
Stay safe, stay smart, and stay private. It’s easy. Just assume that nothing is truly private and you’ll be just fine.
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Read more social media opinions on this blog and watch the Social Blade Show every Thursday at 7pm PDT.
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