Facebook’s Coming Aboard. How Far Do We Let It In?

    People are slowly jumping ship, resisting the great and powerful allure of constant information and connectivity, shunning the invasive, pervasive, shape-shifter Facebook. Are they the wise ones?

    For many, Facebook and its social compadres are highly addictive. They are both time savers and time wasters, enabling us to stay in the loop on a multitude of levels whilst we avoid whatever it is we’re trying to escape (work, the three-hour line at the DMV, an actual conversation…). And the finger I’m pointing is aimed directly at me: Facebook is my ultimate brain crutch, nose-to-nose with Google. Writer’s block? Facebook! Store hours and location? Facebook! It goes on and on, and I let the social riptide carry me out to sea.

    But as much as I have jumped in and submerged myself in the great digital deep, I’ve kept a toe connected with land. With every post I make, there are 100 I keep within the face-to-face world. I shudder to think about all the information that these sites now have --- own --- about us. How quickly we surrender personal details for ad infinitum consumption that, in my grandparents’ lifetimes would hardly have been spoken at all.

    To me, the over-sharing of intimate, horrifying, and terribly mundane moments with all your “friends” is not the scariest or weirdest part. In my opinion, the very worst is that we publicize our location to the world. I’ve heard all the arguments for social location marketing, and I get it. I hear you. I’ve tried it here and there (often when I’ve left a location, mostly to promote a client and/or event, but never the locations I frequent, such as my gym), and while I completely understand the appeal, I remain fully skeptical. I understand you can technically control who sees what, but do you really and truly know and trust all your “friends?” And, when these companies like Facebook, Foursquare, Gowalla, etc., have your information, who’s to say they will protect it and you at all costs? Considering the speed with which Facebook changes its privacy settings, why do we continue to trust the flimsy veil of security?

    Well, I’m here to tell you that you shouldn’t. In the end, you, the social media user, do not benefit from sharing too much. You may win a free eyebrow wax by checking in to your favorite salon, but the salon wins your information, as does the lurker in the parking lot with his smartphone, just waiting for his next victim.

    Perhaps you think I’m overreacting, but before you delete this digital-message-in-a-bottle, I ask you to please think carefully before using Facebook or another site to “check in.” Even if you aren’t in physical danger, your information sharing puts you at great risk for fraud and identity theft. Think about what you’re sharing and who can see those details. And even if you would never in a million years “check in,” I bet you know someone who does. Consider talking to them.

    I won’t be forcing social media to walk the plank (I love it too much, even for all its wacky faults), but I will continue to track these sites carefully, because guess what? They are tracking us.

    So, if you’re brave and savvy enough, go ahead and set sail, but remember to watch your top knot.

Interested in diving deeper? Continue reading then drop me a line.

Internet Safety Homework Thieves capitalize on Internet users who share too much (Star News, North Carolina): Who should control your personal data? (CBS News) RAINN’s Back to School Safety Tips (Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network): App Makers May Be Exposing Your Sensitive Data to Hackers (PC World) Mobile Devs Fined $50,000 for Violating Children’s Privacy (Mashable): Mexican Drug War Spreading to the Web (Fox News [Latino]): Our addiction to technology trumps caffeine, chocolate and alcohol (LA Time Tech Blog) Location Services Is this thing on? Taking pictures with your iPhone? If your “Location Services” setting is on, your iPhone is tracking the exact location of the photo. While this can be handy when looking back over images later, if you upload your pictures to a social site, that metadata can transfer, too. Something to think about! Here’s my iPhone photo usage across North America. Big picture: zoom a little   zoom a lot   Check-ins Mark the Spot for Danger This past winter I was in Austin for work and stopped to visit with my brother. He was in a meeting, so I waited in the coffee shop adjacent to his office. It’s a trendy joint, so I thought I’d be cool and check in to show all my friends where I was hunkered down. I instantly regretted my decision because as soon as I was checked in, I could see every other Facebook user who was in the coffee shop at that moment, and there was my picture under “who’s here now.” Any stranger sitting nearby could have recognized me from my profile photo and gathered just enough intel to do harm. As a 30-year-old woman, this was alarming. But what if I were 15 or in a spot much less benign? That’s just flat-out dangerous. What do Check-Ins look like? PHPR Inc. on Foursquare:           PHPR Inc. on Facebook