A short preamble I am not going to be politically correct in this post. A lot has been said about Google and Facebook privacy online so I decided as well to ad my opinion and I though about doing it in a way to cut it sharp and going direct to the point. My thinking is that online, in the web environment there is no privacy. Sorry to be so harsh but it is a fact. Some arguments for this thesis will follow up.

In a great post Facebook Privacy who Care Mark Cuban goes for a lot of subjects I completely subscribe. The main one is the following:

• “When you tell 500mm people that you are interested in finding  something, friends, business, whatever,  did you really think that only applied to your immediate circle of friends?”

It is a fact that web is a global network of IP servers and addresses linked together. Another thing is that web was partly developed by the American military arm. Also everyone know that all the computers are all linked together and that the data of any website, email, service, widget online si stored somewhere by someone. Plus not just that info is stored but once it is published will be again indexed by search engines, directories, social bookmark websites, and other sophisticated spiders out there.

So bearing this in mind there should be no doubts about if what is online is private or not. It simply it is not, or at least is very subjective. Of course there are some gates and layers in the degree that data it is more or less accessible and of course having said this does not mean I will not do anymore my online banking, trading or ecommerce, by the contrary. My focus here is about be aware of the different levels of privacy while using Social Media online… When publishing inside websites that have millions of other people and different ways of being used and manipulated for the good and for the worst.

“I don’t believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time … I mean we really have to think about these things as a society.” Eric Schmidt

Both Google are very clear in the way they deal with the subjects of privacy:

• “For more information about how Google protects privacy, please refer to our privacy policy”

And Facebook with a bigger privacy documentation than actually the American Constitution make everyone know the issues with their access to data and try to make people aware of the subjects people are dealing when using their websites, products and so forth… have a look at this post in one of my favourite websites / websites Boing Boing: Infographic: Facebook’s “anti-privacy monopoly”

Even if you need to go through the hard work of understanding all of it. It is a fact that it is out there and you can read it.

This does not mean that we should stop fighting for our privacy online. By the contrary. This just means that one needs to behave online and be conscious about the complexities and intrinsic systems of wired issues in the web and namely social media ecosystem.

In the real world sometimes you are stolen, your house is broken, so please just be open eyes and think for a while. Why should that not happen online. Also when you are online publishing you stuff and sharing it with your friends somehow you become a media player, a publisher. And as any media publisher please do your home work, ultimately you are responsible for your acts and you can always get out of the online and social. It is your decision! Just don’t be fatalistic!

Related articles

• Ways to Protect Your Privacy on Social Networking Websites Like Facebook (computersight.com)
• The year of surfing dangerously (tech.fortune.cnn.com)