Illusion of privacy

Just a friendly reminder: Be careful about what you put on Facebook.

Last week an 18-year-old Philadelphian decided it would be a good idea to brag about his drug use, and use his mugshot as his profile picture on MySpace after he killed one person and injured another with his vehicle while he was under the influence. As a result, police officers attained a search warrant and confiscated multiple items, including his computer.

While this is an extreme example, it shows that anything put online, whether on Facebook, MySpace or a blog, is not private.

So I decided to see what incriminating evidence and private information I could find on Facebook about people I don’t know.

The easiest and most obvious is underage drinking. I hope none of you are looking for an internship or job anytime soon. And to the girl who listed “smoking pot” as one of her activities, don’t bother. According to CollegeRecruiters.com, 5 percent of employers now check Facebook and 77 percent check the Internet during background checks.

It’s not unreasonable to think that more employers will check their employees’ Facebook pages as the site continues to gain in popularity. We occasionally see stories about teachers who lose their jobs due to pictures of them drinking or dressing in a way their school district deems inappropriate.

I then transitioned my point of view from an employer to a stalker. How many people could I find that have “drinking” or “bars” as one of their interests, and also list their phone number or address?

 I was impressed with the number of people who didn’t have that information listed, but there are still too many people who do, including five of my friends. Keep in mind these profiles are viewable by everyone.

If that information is available, I’m sure their status will alert the world to where they are on Saturday night. If they didn’t have time to update their status, the would-be stalker could just go through their pictures to see what bars they frequent.

There are a number of easy and responsible steps that people neglect to take to ensure their somewhat personal information remains somewhat private. If you don’t make sure it stays private, then it’s kind of like you’re writing your name, number, address, favorite color and weird obsession with Tiny Toons on a piece of paper and handing it to random people on Kirkwood. If you’re not comfortable with the thought of that, you should probably remove certain information from your profile.

And while we’re on the topic of privacy, lets look at Facebook’s privacy policy. They leave plenty of room in their privacy policy to do whatever they want with your information. Facebook can keep your information on their Web site for as long as they wish, and they can share it with whomever they want.

Your profile might not affect you now, but it could resurface in 10 or 20 years when you decide to run for a political office or apply for that nice, high-paying job.
If you put something on the Internet, expect other people to find it.