Is Publicity Worth Your Dignity?

The pervasiveness of Facebook continues, and its users are quick to follow the crowd and reveal more personal information.  It starts with giving your name, email address, age, location, and gender.  While such basic information could be found other ways, using Facebook as many do, they are likely to tell almost perfect strangers some weird things.  Some add their cell phone number to their profile, but the major offense I notice is posting that they are going out of town and where they are going.  While it could seem innocent, first off, it is pompous to tell your friends you are going on an expensive vacation in Europe, but it is also dangerous.  Considering that no “privacy” settings on Facebook are sufficient, some criminal could read your profile and know that your house will be unattended and break in, and will be able to get away scott-free because you won’t be home for another week.  While I don’t have a problem telling good friends that you are going on vacation, I think telling acquaintances should wait until after you have returned home.

People also need to be aware of not only profile updates, but general Internet use and how cookies work.  They can sometimes be helpful, but scary when all of Facebook knows that you just bought movie tickets and what song you just listened to.  In all honesty, who cares?!  If I really like a product, I might email a link to a close friend before I buy it to ask their opinion, but not all of my friends need to know.  All of these “who cares” updates are one of the reasons why I got off of Facebook and will not return until the silliness goes away.

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