Facebook

[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

[Crankin]

Nancielle, yes, I am going to the job fair. I am also going to ask about working where I am at now; getting the courage to "sell myself" tomorrow, possibly. I am lucky that I can afford to do fee for service, but I don't want to prolong the 2 years to get my license. It's a balance between wanting some time to ride and have a little breathing room and being done in 2 years and not one minute longer!
I saw a job on Idealist today that would be perfect for me, in a day treatment center in Central Sq. I could take the train and there is possibility of flexible schedule. But, I think it's too soon to send my resume.

[Cataboo]

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

I emailed you a little bit after you ditched facebook! I'm two, really!

[Mr. Bloom]

My FB post this morning states:

I find it disturbing that, while looking on a Washington Post news site, I see WP articles posted on FB by FB friends. This demonstrates a much higher level of integration in nonaffiliated sites than I think is healthy....hmmmmm

I think I have a decision to make...even if I have nothing to hide, this seems intuitively dangerous

[OakLeaf]

Just disallow that FB script when you're not actually on FB...

I'm serious, anyone who's concerned about privacy, even on the level of being creeped out, should control the scripts that are running on their computer. It's a little bit of a pain, but you don't need any technical knowledge, just the experience of messing with the controls for a couple of days.

[NbyNW]

My FB post this morning states:

I find it disturbing that, while looking on a Washington Post news site, I see WP articles posted on FB by FB friends. This demonstrates a much higher level of integration in nonaffiliated sites than I think is healthy....hmmmmm

I think I have a decision to make...even if I have nothing to hide, this seems intuitively dangerous

I've been wondering about this lately too. If you can figure out how to disable it, I'd love to know how!

[emily_in_nc]

I've got all Apps & Websites turned off in FB. It's under your account -> privacy settings, and should prevent the behavior you're concerned about, Mr. B.

[Mr. Bloom]

This happened on my iPad where I haven't found an ability to disable scripts but I'm still researching...

Here's the thing I see as dangerous:
- I get privacy issues...ironically this doesn't bother me since I'm not doing anything I'd be ashamed of...
- but, now that I've seen the "dots connected", I see an ability for an uninformed third party to draw incorrect presumptions about me simply by my association with folks who do certain things or post links to other things...

In a "McCartney-esk" world, this could be a bad thing whether or not I disable scripts or not...where I might be held accountable, by association, for the actions/beliefs of casual friends and acquaintances that I may share little in common with...except that I let them into my "FB tent"

[shootingstar]

For people whose primary paid jobs is to demonstrate how to manage information at an advanced level by using certain web technology tools, one does have abit of published stuff on the Internet. In my field, employers expect it and would question a candidate's basic technical as well as conceptual (by subject area) ability.

So I will say....blogging is a very simple content management technology, that does not offer the same robustness or scaleability as other content management software technologies. But I could only claim this the best...by actually blogging, using Wordpress and its different versions (.com vs. self-hosted .org versions) and comparing it with other technologies where I have both planning and implementation expertise.

So in a way for me not to use FB, I might be not enhancing my skill set since blog content can be pushed into one's own FB. However, I still think FB technology is more of a communication and distribution tool instead of a sophisticated content management tool. It appears to me, unless someone can tell me differently, that capacity to search FB content is extremely limited. Same for Twitter which is worse because of the 140 character limit which only creates cryptic messages of little value in a few months.

Certainly people's careers that involve marketing, they should become familiar with FB and Twitter (another tool, which has limited distribution capacity. It's greatest strength like FB is speed and ubiquity, provided the planned target audience also has FB and Twitter). I know that many of colleagues are Twittering from conferences, etc. Am I missing out on the scuttlebut? Well, I'm only interested, in the end, the published stuff or phone/face-to-face networking. Even on listserves, people on the job don't have time to use their professional association listserves, internet forums, etc.

Virtual collaboration and communication on the job and related to one's job, is great if there's time and if your employer pays you to use some of it, even if only in a targeted way.

I'm just explaining my position from a career/job standpoint as somone steeped in information management for most of my career.