"Facebook users who check in to a store or click the "like" button for a brand may soon find those actions retransmitted on their friends' pages as a "Sponsored Story" paid for by advertisers.

Currently there is no way for users to decline this feature."

Read the full story here if you use Facebook: Yahoo! News

It seems that Facebook plans to milk you for all you got if you let 'em.

I came across an interesting blog post about the evolution of Facebook privacy over the last 5 years. It's by Matt McKeon, a developer at IBM Research's Center for Social Software.

Just link yourself over here and click through the timeline links on the right side.

If your privacy is important to you, learn about it and take control.

A good friend of mine has been going through the process of removing himself from Facebook. As privacy concerns become more and more an issue on the site, all of us should be making a determination for ourselves just where we stand on the issue of online privacy.

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook believes that online privacy is a thing of the past; that we wish to live our lives in a transparent fashion. Think along the lines of the 1998 movie "The Truman Show" where Truman Burbank, played by Jim Carrey, lives his life on camera, unaware he is the star of a TV show about himself. Now Zuckerberg is probably correct in that some of us do apparently have no issues broadcasting ourselves into the public at large. I remember having dinner at a restaurant recently and enjoying a fellow diner's loud conversation with his wife... on a Nextel no less. Beep Beep! I'm sure he doesn't mind that he is broadcasting himself on Facebook either.

The issue is, however, that on Facebook and their new affiliated sites (Pandora, Yelp, Microsoft, et. al.) you have to make a dedicated effort to opt-out of sharing your personal information. You need to take time and read through the myriad privacy options and see just what you are sharing with whom. If you don't, you are sharing everything you ever posted, wrote, and typed, your email address, your photos, with everyone. Do remember that on Facebook, 'everyone' means the wide world of the internet, not just all your friends.

So however you feel about your privacy, take an hour and review what you've been sharing on Facebook. You just might be surprised. For those looking to deactivate or delete your account, Elinor Mills over at CNET just posted an excellent article with details on what deactivation means and how to find the delete button.

With Facebook and Zuckerberg pushing the envelope of what your privacy means, this is one time we all need to be proactive to make sure we aren't being sold out while we sleep.


CNET article: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20005556-245.html

The neverending saga of Facebook privacy issues:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook

Facebook

Everyone knows Google - it's the verb we love, the internet search that's our ubiquitous friend. Google may have started out with a search engine but they are much more now. Google is a web browser (Chrome), an email client (Gmail), a messaging app (Talk), and voice chat (Voice). Google is an office suite that comprehensively manages your documents and calendar (Google Apps). Google is an operating system not just for your computer (Chrome), but for your cell phone (Android). Google is YouTube, Google Earth, and Google Maps.

Not only does Google have a picture of your house, they know your address, what you write and to whom, who you email and message with, what you store on your computer's hard drive (Google Desktop). They know what you do on your Android phone. They know what addresses you look up on Maps, and they know what photos you saved and look at with Picasa. This all seems great in the surface, but it would be wise to remember:

Google isn't in business to provide us with free stuff.

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