Privacy in a world of extroverts and exhibitionists

When is it too much?

It is interesting when you encounter invasive disclosure requirements that leave you wondering if you have become overexposed and vulnerable.

You meet a fine line and distinction that probably is left to gut instinct as to how you respond and what you are willing to give away. For instance, when over a decade ago the gap in my employment was predicated on the need for cancer treatment and recuperation, I offered to present a medical note from my consultant, but the employer instead requested my medical prescription.

For me, that was egregious and intrusive, I could find no rationale for such a request. Then again, I half appreciated that the request was being processed outside of the boundaries of Europe even as the job was in the UK and I lived in the Netherlands. Much as I could have challenged the request further than I did, I felt that this kind of unwarranted intrusion was not only adverse but that the cultural norms of a certain domain had not cultivated the understanding of elements of privacy we Europeans were accustomed to.

Handling the issues with tact

I soon removed myself from the process and declined the offer because we had reached an impasse beyond which there was no viable future in which I would have felt comfortable.

Indeed, the issues of privacy, secrecy, and confidentiality work together to protect the person we are, having the confidence that you only need to share what is necessary for the sake of meeting a requirement without losing the mechanisation or automation of expediency. I still believe even as a technologist that traditional methods of handling private data have better checks and balances that are less susceptible to unfortunate biases.

At other times, it is being embarrassed by circumstances engendering almost a sense of shame or failure, but these are all part of the story of life if systems are allowed to spare our blushes.

I hope I still have some control

I consciously curate what I am ready to reveal and share, I have faced some challenges that have required inspiration and dare I say of divine provenance to address certain requests. Important in all of this is being open about very significant elements of myself that half a century ago would not have been possible and is still detrimental in some countries and regions around the world.

Where you do not want to be is realising you have lost control of your own narrative in the quest for something you desire, but not at any price.

We have such wide-ranging diversity and have encountered serious adversity at various times, yet we are who we are with all that pertains to who we are and the relationships we hold dear. We understand responsibility and loyalty and appreciate the quality of character while striving for a better world in whatever place we might find ourselves.

I guess I am grateful for understanding and being understood. Even the most interesting and good books need covers, and the most beautiful windows do at times need the curtains drawn. Between the exhibitionist by inclination and the spectacle by duress, neither should be the only choices about how we choose to tell our stories if we are not fully persuaded.

Essential Snobbery 101: Lazy profiles and social mis-engagement

A profile absent of you

A message arrives on my phone from an unidentified number without an introduction, but a greeting with familiarity suggesting we met somewhere some time ago and the expectation that I will immediately respond as if by some divination or telepathy I have fully acknowledged who that person is.

I will call it social mis-engagement, the mistake of seeing yourself through the profile or attributes of another and by that believing the other can see the same of you when you have provided no identifiable or distinguishable information to make you recognisable.

This presents in many places, in emails, text messages, profiles, and other forms of social and communication forums. This is the scenario: you have a profile, an apparently blank one, let’s say, for purposes of discretion and nothing wrong with that. You view another profile that has all the fields diligently filled in, personally identifiable information, maybe pictures and descriptive text highlighting particularities and more. This is enough to pique your interest, and so you decide to engage.

Know yourself from others

Whatever might have inspired the engagement in the profile viewed is not present in your profile, but something suggests to you unawares that this person is as interested in you and you are in them, even as your profile remains completely nondescript. You fall into presumption, thinking the person you engaged with, without you sharing anything of yourself, is enthralled by you.

Through that engagement, you test patience, courtesy, respectfulness, and niceness, totally unaware that you’re losing, making good conversation, their interest and failing to sustain their engagement. Then the sheer effrontery of asking for more personal information without having volunteered anything of yourself is quite a lack of goodwill and is done in bad faith. You must first attempt to balance out the deficit of information in your profile before asking for more.

Unwittingly, you are also being profiled; your parsimony with personal information belies an absence of generosity, awareness, or empathy when meeting strangers. A selfish streak of finding only satisfaction for self without some mutuality comes across as an involuntary character trait for which you might be judged, and can well prejudice that engagement. It may not be seen as rude, but the absence of social graces is too obvious to ignore.

Be quick to volunteer

When anyone is engaged with an imbalance of essential profile elements, they should not have to wait to be asked to present those pieces of information and avoid frustrating the engagement. People maintain interest through stimuli; a blank profile, be it contact information, on social media, or on LinkedIn, is hardly such; it is a put-off at best.

A one-sided kind of engagement breeds unnecessary resentment and reeks of self-importance. The apparent secretiveness, if that is the reason, is the harbinger of social mis-engagement that once the patience of the other, who had put the work into their profile, is exhausted, all means of continuing communication will be lost rather than being met with silence. You will be blocked and depending on the forum as unprofessional, unserious, or a time-waster.

Do the graft work

There are no hard and fast rules, but as a matter of courtesy, if you intend to engage others in a forum that provides means to populate a profile, do the work. Do not invite people into a conversation when you sport a lazy and empty profile or readily provide the information without prompting to bring the other person up to speed about who you are and why you are interested in them. By the same token, you also give them the opportunity to have reference points that will grow their interest in you.

Then also, if the information is already in their profile, read it and understand it, only ask questions to confirm or clarify content, or to elicit more information about elements not already in their profile. Do not assume because you think no one will read your profile, and that having informed your decision not to populate it means others have been thinking the same way as you.

Don’t be a parasite

Engagement should tend towards the symbiotic and mutually beneficial; it should not be parasitic and demanding, caring little for the other. The enthusiasm with which you engage others would be reciprocated with the willingness to volunteer as much about yourself or else it is just the unfair exploitation of others. Invariably, do unto others as you expect to be done unto.

If you will not do your profile, stick with birds of the same feather without profiles; at least you have a level playing field and will know that your interest was out of mere curiosity rather than a genuine interest in the person and what they are about. Selah!

Dreamscape: Part messages and complete deception

Strange and familiar in one

The dreamworld brings a collision between reality and fantasy, within which some interesting codes can be read and maybe misunderstood, but we that dream and can remember our dreams including those that appear to repeat themselves replaying strange things and places that you now remember like you have been there too many times before can only wonder about the many worlds we inhabit at the same time.

A well-respected and renowned preacher after delivering a reflective homily decided to give some of the clergy or church leadership a parting gift of grace. The one I witnessed was where he was given a strip of paper with part of a message, and he instructed the man to engage in deep devotional prayer and the rest of the message essential to him will be revealed during solemn contemplation.

Making easy work of discipline

I thought it would be hard and ascetic, the honour and veneration in which the preacher was held would lead the person to follow the instruction at the earliest opportunity. However, as I left the meeting, I noticed that there were other people who had been given a part message and some were reading their apparently secret messages out loud.

It transpired that others were eavesdropping and connecting up the part messages without the required devotional activity and by stringing up together six or so part messages will get the full message the preacher was giving to the church, a kind of epistle for modern times.

Build in your requirements

At that point, I thought it was not enough to just give out the part messages, as written down, but each person should have been given a unique keyword that would different each message such that if anyone picked up the part message of someone else and used it, it would become obvious that the knowledge was acquired through stealth rather than devotion.

I thought about the dream and how it relates to computer encryption when the message meant for one can only be decrypted by another who had the key. How messages given should be private, probably done in secret and handled as confidential. Trust is not enough, it should have adequate security too.

As I probably should not have witnessed the sharing of message and the recipients should not have been reading out their messages, worse still as I was no party to any of the messages but as some passing-by and just observant person, I had by accident stumbled on something that should have been confidential and the impact of the message might have been lost in its becoming public through indiscretions and spiritual laxity. And the dream ends.

Double life: Denials creating a first time every time

Learned to perfection

Society sometimes helps model people into quite interesting and unique individuals with somewhat common traits. I have observed this in people with fantasies, maybe dreams or daring ambitions.

The secretiveness that governs the quest should be a case for study; it might well have been studied, who knows?

They come across as knowledgeable of what they want having relived the fantasy so many times, it has become experiential as to be performed as rote.

First time every time

Having satisfied that fantasy, the truth then emanates that it is really just the first time and then a torrent of denials follow.

First about whom they are and how their deviation of the public façade they present is an anomaly, then about their fears about being discovered calls for utter discretion.

This is quite duplicitous and probably dishonest too, the secret double-lives puts all interactions at varying levels of risk as the protagonist finds an accommodation that balances quest and guilt with managed daring and pangs of conscience.

The art of denial

Using the device of denial, they deign to wipe the slate clean every time that each real repetition of the fantasy is projected as a novice who just seems to have the deft hand of the expert. Denial has become an art form, practiced with all the necessary safeguards to prevent the Jekyll and Hyde lives in the same person from visiting each other.

At which point you begin to wonder, who you can believe and who has created a world of make-belief, therein lies the erosion in trust of strangers with fantasies.

Double life: Brief encounters of the uncomfortable kind

Angst meetings

There are lessons to be learnt from the collision of pseudonym and a reality that generally carries stigma that suggests the anonym is the best representation of self with the fleeting and the incidental.

People live secret lives and find places for the expression of such with sometimes dire consequences for others who are in many ways accepting of who they are.

Experiences of angst-ridden double-life episodes should make one the wiser of such encounters that the less said, the less harm is done and consequently the less trouble for all concerned.

Rein in

Why there is any need to rein in is a dilemma met by many in settings that are supposed to provide the freedom of expression, yet one learns that reining in risk and reining in honesty are the valid actions in self-preservation; that being the preservation of anonymity and sanity, if you rein in loquacity.

Sadly, where some refuse to take responsibility for the actions they as sane, sober adults in pursuit of a thrill or fantasy indulge in, deciding to have others shoulder such for them in a society where the blame culture is the first sanctuary of the irresponsible, the honest and true is bruised.

The ignorance is worse

Beyond angst, the worst encounters are those with the ignorant, despite the surfeit of knowledge and information of risk, precaution, protection and vulnerability, they have not taken the time to understand the basics, such that it becomes a crash course in passion-killing discourse, the cue taken to immediately abort the liaison.

No words except for what one will not deign, no truths except for when it is necessary, avoiding the tangling webs of deceit woven by the curious in search of the abominable to those with whom they partner in life, to wit the visitation of the magi of the law, that in fright anonym, pseudonym and orthonym collide, with all laid bare by the intimidation of that number.

Jots taken, future uncertain, ringing in the new on the wings of controversy. Becalm thyself, ye have done naught wrong.

Thought Picnic: In life, we will always differ

Of secrets deep inside

Following on the issue of acceptance and understanding of my parents and relations concerning things that affect and define me, I realise there is much we probably will never get to talk about.

Many decisions and allowances have become the story I have never fully told, yet, I have friends urging and compelling me to reveal more facets of my makeup.

Finding a new direction

Beyond that, there are elements of activism that I am not too conversant with, but I have experience of because of whom I am and what I have.

To some, these issues are lifestyle choices, but to those who live within that framework, if we could really make those choices we would have made completely different ones.

There is no reason to go against the grain to prove a point deliberately, we are not obstinate and stubborn people geared to offend, upset and embarrass anyone, we are just human.

We suffer in silence

However, elements of our humanity are still difficult to understand and accept; some of it comes with fear, with shame, with stigma, with discrimination and sometimes violence unwarranted.

Besides this, some of us bear in ourselves a death sentence, organisms seeking to sap away our life force and yet we refuse to give in – we are survivors, telling a tale mostly to ourselves that we will see another day, another year and more beyond that.

Both different and the same

We just want to get on with our lives and not have to face the unremitting scrutiny of people who want to define our lives by what they consider the norms to which we cannot adhere.

When we do sit down to talk about some difficult and hard truths, we might be different but no less than anyone else engaged in the pursuit of love, happiness, peace, joy and a life worthy of remembrance and positive impact in our communities.

Thought Picnic: Keeping Our Secrets and Lies

The way we are

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the issue of choices we end up making by reason of our loss of innocence, this topic is one I chose to write about because I felt a burden, the need to give voice to a matter we rarely deal with.

We however do need to appreciate that our experiences inform the way we interact within our social circles both far and near, more importantly, we must know the things to share from the things to keep secret.

It is unsettling to realise that some people failing to see life from perspectives completely different from theirs think everyone should follow the template of their example in terms of how revealing and open they should be about their private lives.

Off my turf, you militants

It is almost as if they are suggesting others are not entitled to some privacy, secrecy or talk less of confidentiality whilst defining their friendship on the basis of the total revelation of self.

This thinking is taking on a militancy where unpalatable words are bandied around to coerce and bludgeon the non-pliant into a defensiveness with the hope that the affected divest themselves of their self-esteem in the pursuit of the narrow focus of acceptance satisfying the assailant rather than maintaining the status quo of comfortable accommodation that embraces the many – this is an acceptable compromise the majority resides in and it is not unhealthy.

Boxes and labels

People just want to be accepted as human beings and active participants in the global village of humanity without having to be identified by labels some feel others should have by reason of race, gender, ability or sexuality much as it is trendy to identify with all sorts of minority tags to appear hip.

Much as we compartmentalise our lives in the hope that things we reveal and the other things we conceal will retain a modicum of mystique about ourselves, it should always be the prerogative of the individual and that person should not be under pressure to expose themselves beyond what they are comfortable with.

The conceit

I do hope that those who have successfully created boxes and labels for their lives should realise that the perfection they have achieved is not a one-size-fits-all for everyone else, it is utterly pompous to even hazard the thought that your definitions automatically form the full assessment of a subject.

The hubris of those who have not walked in the shoes of others reeks of conceit and in pushing back it is necessary to make it clear to them that it is at first none of their business and then not everyone really wants to be like them, however strongly they feel labels give them the fulfilment they think it brings to them

Mind your own business

Frankly, besides being livid with rage, one is not impressed – they should get on with whatever they want to do with their lives and stories but stop being judgmental of those with a greater sense of discretion and decency, it is no shame to have secrets and fear is a healthy emotion for the assessment of risk.

Just think, the reason why people might not be so open with you might not be because they do not trust you but because you have not earned their confidence – it is a process, it does not come by probing inquisitive intrusion into the inner recesses of a person; that is utterly disrespectful.

Social Media: Education is Always Better than Sanction

I originally wrote this for my Akin Consults Blog, however, whilst I was catching up on reading material that I usually share on Twitter by taking the headline, the URL and adding a short opinion of mine, I happened on this article 26 Internet safety talking points, it to me is one of the best articulated views on Internet usage and policing, some of which will apply to the topic covered further on in this blog.

I have because of this update changed the title of the blog to reflect these ideas and I think anyone who uses the Internet or anyone who is involved in formulating Internet policy will find these talking points quite useful.

Social media – the fall guy

Over the last couple of months, social media and by that I mean the use of Facebook, Twitter and Blogs has taken a bad rap in Nigeria.

From politicians uncomfortable the ease of access, freedom of expression, unrelenting scrutiny with the attendant abuse that would put Mosaic curses in the shade through its use by swindlers, kidnappers and murderers for incomprehensible ends.

The same social media has been exploited for political advantage too, for engaging the youth in the political process, for aspects of good and sometimes bad propaganda, for crowd-funding, crowd-sourcing and the dissemination of ideas.

The problem is use

However, it is the tragic case of Cynthia Osokogu that brings to the fore elements of usage that we need to very aware of. The young lady apparently met two men while interacting on Facebook, began a business transaction with them that involved her travelling to Lagos where she was picked up, drugged, raped, beaten up, murdered and then dumped in a mortuary where her family finally discovered her.

Fundamentally, the problem here is not social media, or Facebook in particular, Facebook just served as a medium of communication that could have been achieved by other means though maybe not with the same ease.

The problem with the use and I emphasise the word use of Facebook is people have by reason of the ease of interaction lowered the thresholds of trust they have such that they probably do not go through more stringent steps of ascertaining and verification of activities they get involved in.

Before social media they existed

Before any of the social media we have today, swindlers, confidence tricksters, kidnappers and murderers existed just as there were people to be taken advantage of through foolishness, ignorance, naivety or vulnerability.

We so easily let our guard down hoping that the social media vehicle we are using will take up the slack and do the vetting for us but there is no substitute for doing the basic things of not meeting strangers outside your comfort zone, informing people of what you are up to, documenting whatever you are involved in and taking a friend with you if need be for your safety.

When I am going to meet strangers, I always leave a sheet of paper on my table with all the contact details along with a backup element that can be found if there is a need for that.

Some basic analogies

The analogies to use are simple – you do not because you have bought a new knife use it recklessly, you are probably going to be more careful with its use lest you cut yourself. Likewise, the ease of communication offered by social media should have your suspicious and alert mechanisms at their most primed to ensure you are not sucked into a vulnerable situation from which you cannot extract yourself.

In the same vein, you do not because you have a fast car put your foot down on the accelerator and go over a cliff with glee, with a fast car comes better brakes and better control – if those controls are used wisely, you are in a safer vehicle for it protections rather than for its speed. Likewise, the ease with which you can share information should inform the carefulness involved in keeping some of that information back

Common-sense with social media

I have always worked on a simple principle – If in DOUBT, keep it OUT – there is just no need to dump all that information out there just as you do not have your home as thoroughfare for the public to walk through at will without restraint.

We are naturally careful about our private information, it should not be different from our adoption of social media and like our mothers used to say when were kids – Don’t take sweets from strangers – the same principle should apply to anywhere we interact with strangers – we do not know them well enough to trust them and God only knows what they have in mind for us.

Conversely, we should try to believe the best of everyone whilst retaining a modicum of suspicion, it does not have to border on paranoia, but a healthy dose of paranoia is not bad or the principle of personal safety and the possible elimination of dangerous situations.

The real problem

Without making little of the tragedy that befell Cynthia Osokogu, social media is not the problem, it has never been the problem, it the use of or the lack of knowledge of the common-sense uses of social media that is the problem and that is where people need the most education that it should not lower the needs to ascertain, determine, verify and be careful about the people we interact with and it cannot carry the burdens of trust and trustworthiness that come from being streetwise, smart and discerning of character, aims and intentions.

We once had letters, then telephones, then telegrams, then telex, then facsimile machines, then mobile phones and now the smorgasbord of easy communication untethered and free – we are however still human and have not metamorphosed into cyborgs – it means those very basic human characteristics still matter and years from now newer modes of communication will be created and hopefully human-beings will know not to abandon their gut instincts for the thrill of technology.

To Cynthia Osokogu – Rest in peace – no know can begin to think of the harrowing experiences you went through as those men took your life and to your family my heartfelt condolences.

Thought Picnic: Managing Friends for Real Privacy

Everyone needs privacy

If anything bothers me about the whole furore regarding Prince Harry’s wild and wanton frolics in Las Vegas it is the fact that he has no real friends around him.

There is no doubt that there are certain standards of behaviour expected of the young man who is third in line to the British throne, however, I am more persuaded of the fact that an exacting public persona does not need to become the whole expression of any famous personality.

Therefore, wherever he goes in the world with all the trappings and privileges he has, he should in his private time outside the requirements of official activity be able to enjoy himself as any normal person of his age should without the fear of having his private moments splashed across the global rags offering titillation, excoriation, opprobrium and commentary from the holier than thou crowd whose private sinful lives will make the devil blush.

Keeping true friends

This is where the powerful, recognisable and very rich need real friends, people who can be trusted whose friendship is borne of genuine affection rather than those star struck who for bribes and greed for filthy lucre will betray confidences just to have been seen with influential people.

People who will protect the dignity, the privacy and the secrecy of each other as if they have sworn blood oaths on the pain of death to defend to the last the relationships that have come through the roughest times unscathed.

I dare say that such can only be achieved by mixing in the circles where the person is respected yet not adulated or deified, amongst people who can be quite honest with their advice without being tongue-tied or fawning in nauseating obsequiousness. There is no easy way of saying that those of influence who seek privacy should mostly do so amongst their class or their betters.

Discernment should precede enjoyment

One can understand that the prince would not want to have an unnecessary security cocoon around himself and it will be almost impossible to vet all those that come in contact with him to know their backgrounds and motives before they are allowed to associate.

The prince himself should be more discerning and forthright, choosing his posse with a better sense of judgement; he should know those who are really devoted to him from those who are devoted to making something out of being in his circle.

Laying down some rules

I cannot say he has that much to learn from his brother, Prince William but there are lessons of history to appreciate. Some 5 years ago, Prince William and Kate Middleton went their separate ways and what I observed of that separation was Prince William not speaking up for the lady he loved when his friends made fun of her background.

I would suspect someone Prince William respects sat him down to give him a decent lecture on how first to show the essential level of respect to Kate to woo her back to be his bride and wife whilst telling him to read the Riot Act to anyone who dares snottily derogate the person of his lady.

That Kate Middleton is now a Duchess and will in time be Queen Consort of a future King William V and the heads of those who have not made restitution to Kate Middleton for their disrespect might well bring the vultures back to the Tower of London.

Meanwhile, Prince Harry needs to make a list of all his friends and ditch those are really not his friends whilst crennellating his privacy with those who matter and will fight to ensure the ramparts are never breached.

Facebook: Close your freak show to the voyeurs

What Facebook is up to

If you do not understand Facebook by now, it has placed a bet and you had better get ready to fold, bluff or show your hand, the way you play the game is not dependent on Facebook but you.

The news now is that Facebook is now revealing personal details [1] like your phone number and home address to developers.

That means if you have not tightened the security on your Facebook profile, that information can be extracted by applications and tools that are seeking that kind of information about you.

It is like being clothed and having a body scanner seeing through your clothes to see what you have concealed on your person inviting the curiosity of security to give you a hand job – sorry, the polite term is a pat down.

However, if you are concealing nothing on your person, there is no need for a pat down, you pass through the system, offer the viewer the barest titillation and you are on your way.

Why?

In other words, regardless of how computer savvy you think you are, why are such details on your Facebook profile?

Why does your home address have to be on Facebook? Friends who know you probably have your address, if they don’t they can ask and you have through one single transaction of a telephone call, a text message or an email send your address to them.

There is just no particular reason for your address to be in your Facebook profile, even you were suffering from amnesia and needed an aide memoir for your home address, Facebook does not by the most incredulous stretch of the imagination qualify to be the repository of that standard of personal information.

The question still is why?

The same goes for your phone number; I had a private message exchange with a friend the other day when I wanted to share my phone number. It was just between me and him, I could after sending that message and he calling me delete the message

It was a private information (message) that is stored on Facebook servers, probably retrievable by Facebook but should by no means to shared by Facebook with anyone else.

Following the standard set by Twitter, if authorities make a sealed request for that information, they should seek to reveal that request to me allowing for me to challenge that request in the courts if I feel that disposed.

Just because your life, your views and your pictures are on Facebook does not mean your home address or phone numbers should be on Facebook. I would hope if you published the pictures of your car, you will blank out the license plate number too.

An empty safe eliminates the threat

Just as an empty safe opened to that view of a robber satisfies the robber of its emptiness, if you do not fill that information in on your Facebook profile; by that, I mean your home address, your phone number or any other distinguishing information as your birthdate, your hometown, your current location and so on, developers cannot suddenly have that information to play with and reveal to others.

The circumlocutory argument I am making here is you are primarily responsible first for what you put on Facebook, if you do not put it on Facebook, Facebook cannot use it or abuse it as it shifts the goal posts of security seeking to create business opportunity for itself at your expense and folly.

If it’s about, it gets out

So, you can go into your profile now and start to remove the unnecessary personal information you are sharing like an exhibitionist offering a freak show to leering voyeurs who are ogling with glee free of charge and having a laugh, pimping you off to others of that ilk whilst you think you are all safe in your version of the proverbial emperor’s new clothes.

If in doubt, leave it out, if it’s about it does get out, the choice is yours – is your Facebook an open book for everyone to poke fun at? You are the master of your Facebook destiny, how you lay it out is how you will be seen.

Like I have said before, put on some clothes, close some windows, slam some doors shut and draw some curtains, you do deserve some privacy for your moments of intimacy, don’t you?

Sources

[1] Huffington Post | Facebook Starts Sharing Your Home Address, Phone Number With Developers

Facebook: From figleaf privacy to fully dressed discretion

More Facebook about-face

Many of my friends and readers of my blogs would have read a number of postings about my experiences with Facebook.

There is no doubt that Facebook serves some purpose, I now have connections that date back to primary school about 40 years ago, a good number of secondary school friends are back in my social circle and I am also in contact with close and distant relations along with different acquaintances from all walks of my life.

In that way, Facebook provides a rich social networking experience, the problem arises when having put in all the information that creates the conditions for making, renewing or reestablishing connections you find that you have minimal control over who get access to that information.

Your privates are exposed

Facebook is a sponge for every detail of your life and everything you inadvertently put in can become global knowledge beyond your relations and friends to potential employers, detractors or worse.

Facebook itself is not known to have exemplary ethical conduct in the management of the privacy of its patrons, the company is in flux trying to determine who all this information from over 400 million accounts can be commercialised and monetarised without us having a say over what get push to us by our details or as a result of our relationship.

AllFacebook.com recently posted an article on how the default privacy settings had changed on Facebook between 2005 and April 2010 – I winced at how exposed I had become, it was like an involuntary strip-tease as you clothes were ripped off till I was left with the postscript of a tweet I posted – You only have a fig-leaf for your privates.

The animation of that graphics were originally published by Matt McKeon with the title - The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook – He includes information on how the data was sampled and the comments that follow do help one understand what might be at stake.

Rapidly evolving rules

What is driving the quest for more privacy and sometimes the exodus from Facebook is that the Terms of Service and rules are changing rapidly in favour of the company just exposing more and more of our information in the name of helping more social interaction – nothing could be further from the truth about that.

Personally, I have been actively locking down areas of information that I have put on Facebook just because I do not have much control over where all that information might end up.

Now, for those who are not as technically savvy or understanding of the finer details of privacy, secrecy and confidentiality – if you may know, these words are not synonyms, they mean completely different things, but you have to secure your privacy, manage your secrecy and definitely do not trust strangers with information you feel should be confidential – the underlying question being who can you trust with detail about what you like, what you do and what you’ll rather not share.

How to …

Jason Perlow, a writer for ZDNet; a technical magazine offers some advice in a video which can be very helpful in Lock Down Your FaceBook Profile in 20 Minutes (Video) – some of his suggestions take it to the extreme with the assumption that only friends that already know you are your default contacts, but you need to leave in enough information to distinguish you in some way to old friends like schools and other basic historical information.

You need something to network with but be smart about what you leave in, what you take out and in a more granular setting create lists of most trusted friends and give them more access whilst closing access to others.

Let us use Facebook for what we have intended for it to help us do, link up with friends and family and thwart attempt by the behemoth to convert our precious relationships into filthy lucre.

One piece of advices you should take away from this is to check your profile every month to see that it is still as watertight as you want it to be as Facebook shape-shifts around your privacy. Use Facebook but do not let it use you unethically and unfairly.

Sources

[1] INFOGRAPHIC: The History Of Facebook’s Default Privacy Settings

[2] The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook

[3] Lock Down Your FaceBook Profile in 20 Minutes (Video) | ZDNet