Facebook

[Veronica]

facebook knows a lot of personal information about you and there is no law that keeps them from sharing that info with anyone and their dog.

Veronica

[jobob]

No Facebook here. They have no respect for the users' privacy.

If you use it and you don't pay for it, YOU are the product being sold.

facebook knows a lot of personal information about you and there is no law that keeps them from sharing that info with anyone and their dog.

Like what, V? Apart from what I choose to post about myself, what else does facebook know about me?

Kjay has very politely asked for specifics. I am asking as well.

- Jo.

[snapdragen]

Facebook has nothing about me but my name. I did not enter my address, phone number, city, employer. I've also got the privacy settings pretty much locked down, and I check the regularly. Dear Mr Zuckerberg seems to make changes on a whim.

FB was invaluable to me when my Dad was dying. A friend up in Washington sent me messages regularly, helping me cope while I played "the strong one" for the family (she had lost her Dad a couple of years ago). Other friends posted prayers, wishes or just hello, we love you notes. It meant a lot to me.

Like anything else, FB is what you make it. If you post every intimate detail of your life, the world will know it. Same goes for posting on TE......

[jobob]

It was great to hear from DirtDiva on fb a few hours after the Christchurch earthquake and know that she was OK.

Oh dear, is that Mark Zuckerberg sitting on my toilet ...?

[shootingstar]

There is a twitter page somewhere but that's all it's used for..to auto-post some blog article references. Not used to engage in dialogue with folks.

I know it's under-used. But it's just another distraction to me, away from face to face people who are close to me.

After 3 wks., one of my sisters finally emailed me tonight. I think she's been too busy with her babies and working, etc. No, she's not computer illiterate. She does use her Blackberry, etc. Life just overtakes some folks' schedules.

I always find it interesting how much people do write by email in families whereas in my family, we're fundamentally lazy. Phone is the preferred method. I'm the gabber in family in emails, etc. (No one else in my family blogs.)

I haven't even arranged to Skype with any family member, except my dearie and I'm not pushing them hard when some are juggling other priority things. We're aren't Luddites, it's just hard to express some complex family situations in text vs. verbally. Facebook? Oh, forget it. Just getting emails is an achievement in my family and that's not all family members. Not everyone has a computer.

[jobob]

Not everyone has a computer.

It might be safe to assume that most people who participate in this forum do.

[lph]

Good for you, WR, for thinking things through and figuring out your priorities. It's easy to get caught up in something that is entertaining but ends up wasting too much time. I find myself checking FB very (too) often but not for long at a time, and I've blocked all the game apps. I love it when people post photos, notes, and trip reports, though. And random thoughts from their day - these are my friends after all, not just anyone, so I am interested in what they're thinking about.

[shootingstar]

I think there's a couple of server robots following me around.. I can tell because my blogs reflect the country of who visited the blog (ie. the flags, that's all I know) and there are 1-2 locations that consistently show up too often. I know I don't write exciting stuff to have such a consistent following.

It's at least, a piece of software script that has been programmed to track me at different time intervals on my movement across my blogs. Which would be an easy thing to do. I can see that working somehow on FB.

Yea, I know: creepy.

This is why I don't have any interest to twitter, fb...that's even more exposure for myself.

I'm flabbergasted by people's details on LinkedIn, yet it is heavily touted as THE social media job search tool by marketing/branding yourself.

Nope. I refuse to place details of my employment history there and dates. Tough for me. I apply for jobs normally rather than have people troll for me.

[Veronica]

Like what, V? Apart from what I choose to post about myself, what else does facebook know about me?

Kjay has very politely asked for specifics. I am asking as well.

- Jo.

There is a long Wikipedia article about problems with Facebook.

I know that many of you are very happy with it. That's great and if it lets you stay in contact with people and gives you information, fantastic. It's not something I wish to participate in for a whole host of reasons - (privacy issues, time sump, closed social circle...) I have other ways to stay in contact with people.

Veronica

[Catrin]

I have my FB account locked down tight, and it is a good idea to check your privacy settings regularly. For some of my family this is really the only way we connect with each other - our schedules are so opposite each other...

I only have 54 "friends" - but I know every last one of them and they are, indeed, friends and family. I still won't post anything really personal - I pretty much limit things to cycling updates and links that I like. I suspect that my non-cycling friends and family (most of the 54) are convinced I am a little nutty where cycling is concerned, but that is fine

As with any website of any kind, nothing in the internet every has been or ever will be "private". Especially with social networking sites of any kind, it pays in the long term to remember this...

To illustrate, I can still find emails to a list I subscribed to back in the late 1980's when I was much younger and quite rebellious! Thankfully no one knows that was ME My user names/email addys were far more creative in those years, fortunately.

I am quite thankful that the content from the old bulletin boards (pre-www protocol days) no longer exists, though they were quite fun at the time!

[Crankin]

I have less "friends" than you, Catrin. And they are all people I know.
The most disturbing thing I have found on the internet about me was directly tied to TE. There is a site that tracks your postings on websites; they had my daily average, with my real name by the average. This seemed to be a site that TE must subscribe to, so I let Susan know. I don't remember the name of the site now, but it did seem a bit over the top.
If anyone thinks the stuff you post is private, well, they are dumb. I often wonder if other women riders I know around here look at TE and see my posts. It wouldn't be hard to figure out who I really was, if you knew me in person, even slightly.

[Catrin]

I have less "friends" than you, Catrin. And they are all people I know.
The most disturbing thing I have found on the internet about me was directly tied to TE. There is a site that tracks your postings on websites; they had my daily average, with my real name by the average. This seemed to be a site that TE must subscribe to, so I let Susan know. I don't remember the name of the site now, but it did seem a bit over the top.
If anyone thinks the stuff you post is private, well, they are dumb. I often wonder if other women riders I know around here look at TE and see my posts. It wouldn't be hard to figure out who I really was, if you knew me in person, even slightly.

Yep - nothing is private...I think I know what site you are referring to, I will have to check it out, haven't done so in some time. That is one of the reasons I don't vent here very often - at least not where people or work are concerned, outside of general references.

A good percentage of my FB friends are from church, and I do sometimes wonder what they think of my cycling posts

[OakLeaf]

If you run the Firefox add-on NoScript, you can block Google Analytics as well as other tracking scripts.

You can whitelist any site you want, or temporarily allow scripts (a few retail sites are starting to require Google Analytics to complete a purchase). You can allow Facebook's own scripts to run only when you're actually on Facebook. Probably best to quit out of your browser and re-start it after you navigate away from sites where you've temporarily allowed scripts.

It takes a couple of days to get the hang of using NoScript, but anyone who's concerned about privacy should be using it.

You'll also want to periodically delete your Flash cookies.

[jobob]

As with any website of any kind, nothing in the internet every has been or ever will be "private". Especially with social networking sites of any kind, it pays in the long term to remember this...

Bingo.

[tulip]

I ditched Facebook a year ago and I never looked back. I had 49 or so "friends," all of whom I actually knew. I sent a personal email to each one of them with my contact information: email, phone, and mailing address. I had exactly ONE person actually contact me. One.

I am so much happier spending my time working in my garden, riding my bike, doing Pilates and yoga, reading books, and training my dog. I talk to my real friends on the phone and even visit them in person. I bake bread and learn foreign languages. My life is so rich and full, and I'm not missing a thing and not wasting my time late into the night on the computer.

YMMV