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

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