What's even scarier is all those websites that go along with the intrusion. It is up to the people to decide if their privacy is important to them or not. Family? Friends? If they can't email me and keep it between us, then they aren't family or friends I want.
It's no different than sitting in a restaurant with your loved ones and using a bullhorn that is heard around the world everything you say. EVERYTHING. And stating you can make it private? Um hm. "I'm from the IRS and I'm here to help you".
"Come into my parlor" said the spider to the fly.
It's exactly that, and there is literally no way to have a Facebook and protect your privacy fully. I am no slouch, when it comes to digital rights and internet awareness. I grew up with a geek who's been in the tech world since the dawn of computers - that stuff is nailed into my head
hard.
But even with my savvy, I couldn't do it. I was aware of that - I never posted anything I wouldn't leave laying around on Facebook. I knew that wasn't enough, but the convenience got me. Eventually it'll hurt you, if for no other reason than that you can't get rid of stalkers and Facebook is totally unresponsive to this kind of thing. I was fairly well-known in an industry for a while, saw some bad stuff going down, whistleblew, exited stage-right, and spent the next 6 months fighting off stalkers and other malicious internet activity.
The only solution wound up being deleting almost every online account I had, abandoning all of my old usernames, and even vanquishing my shortened first name from everything except my official published works (there's more, but I won't bore you with the 20-page list of everything I had to do to wipe the slate). Do you have any idea how much work that is when you have an internet history going back to 1999? It took months. I even had to root my phone because it wouldn't stop phoning home to Facebook, and it kept re-activating my account. Had I not had a Facebook, I probably could have worked it out without so much slash-and-burn.
And that's to say nothing of the general concern of someone who has shown himself to be a major stalker, and instills that mentality in his employees, having virtually all of your online usage data.
I got in under the line. Before Timeline came out, and in a part of history where it's still possible (if extremely difficult) to mostly start over. But in a few years it probably won't be. And even with how thorough of a job I did, Facebook will always have a crapton of data on me from my 5 years on their site and the tracking they did. I still have to watch my cookies for signs of Facebook.
It's pervasive. And people who don't care aren't paying attention. People who do care and don't do anything are making the same stupid mistake I did, essentially standing around and waiting for it to bite them.
No amount of convenience is worth that. I'm a full-grown adult and it's high time I learned how to remember to send a damn email. It's not worth it.
