Privacy is for sissies
The concept of privacy means different things to different people. There are those that consider every part of their lives to be private and have no interest in sharing any part of it with the rest of the world and then there are those that chronically overshare on every social media network.
There are some things we want to know and some which you would rather not know about. If you want a quick and easy idea of what oversharing constitutes head over to www.twitter.com/overshares and be prepared to be amused and horrified.
The idea that privacy has different interpretations is nothing new, you need only look at how people have treated the village gossip in years gone by to understand that some people value their personal information more than others.
What has happened is that with the rapid adoption of Facebook and Twitter, the amount of personal information that is out there has been expanded dramatically. Not only can I learn a lot about people if they are silly enough to leave all their information open to all Facebook members, but even those people that shut all the most obvious holes often leave some interesting ones open, like not blocking search engine access to their profiles.
For me there is a very simple rule of thumb that should be observed when dealing with your personal information. Decide if you want your boss to read what you write and post accordingly. I know this from personal experience because my boss follows me and I follow my boss on Twitter. This does not mean that I tweet less, but more that I ensure that I don’t post potentially career-ending posts on Twitter.
Facebook is a simpler matter, because you have to actively accept friends on Facebook, the sensible thing is to only accept friend requests from people that you actually know. Set all options in your privacy setting to Friends only, except New Friend requests, which should be Friends of Friends only. And ensure that all the settings are set to ensure that you are reasonably difficult to find.
The question that you really need to ask is how much of your life do you want to share and who do you want to share it with?
If the answer to the first question is no-one then social media is not for you. You could sign up for Facebook, but then you really shouldn’t have any friends and you definitely shouldn’t click on the dreaded LIKE button. Remember that even admitting that you know someone on Facebook, gives out some information about you.
There is no escaping that. Just the same as retweeting a Twitter post tells me something about you, just like a list of who you follow on Twitter.
The truth is we are living in a world where communicating with large numbers of people (hundreds or even thousands) is relatively simple. Panicking about your privacy is largely a futile exercise because you do control your online presence. As long as you are diligent about checking your settings regularly then you should be able to keep your private information private.
Unless someone hacks your Gmail account, because then you are screwed.
PS: For the record I tend to accept more Facebook friend requests than I reject, I don’t block my Twitter updates and if anyone ever hacks my Gmail account I hope they enjoy digging through the 6GB of junk in that account.
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