Too Much Information

By Jade McDowell – The Daily Universe, Brigham Young U.

UWIRE – The English language is full of common phrases that just don’t go together. Jumbo shrimp. Boneless ribs. Almost exactly. I propose a new addition to the oxymoron list: Internet privacy.
Every day, there are new articles addressing the issue, and this week’s lineup includes quite a variety. A South Carolina policeman was fired after pictures of bikini-clad girls draped over his patrol car surfaced on Facebook. A class action lawsuit has been filed over the use of “cookies” to monitor online shoppers’ choices. A 14-year-old girl posted her birthday party as a public Facebook “event” and invited 15 friends to join, only to receive more than 21,000 RSVPs, mostly from complete strangers twice her age.
When Facebook changed their privacy settings earlier this year, they were condemned from every direction by people angry that they had misunderstood the new settings and their cell phone numbers and wild party photos were suddenly available to the world.
The same thing happened when Google released its social networking feature Buzz. People lashed out when they forgot to set their privacy settings and later realized their “buzzes” were available to their entire Gmail contact list. They were awarded part of an $8.5 million lawsuit settlement in court.
I wasn’t worried. I came up with a genius plan to thwart those privacy-stealing social networks: I didn’t post anything on there I wasn’t OK with the rest of the world seeing.

It’s called the World Wide Web for a reason. If you find yourself in trouble over something you posted on the Internet, I don’t care how good you thought your privacy settings were; you have only yourself to blame.
I’m not saying this because I believe privacy isn’t important. I only let friends see my Facebook profile, including my information page, and I regularly reject friend requests from people I see more as acquaintances than friends. I don’t really want Joe from Nigeria to steal my identity or start stalking me.
But even with these settings, I would never post anything to Facebook, my blog or any other Internet forum that I would be horrified if someone outside my group of friends saw.
Maybe my potential boss can’t see my profile, but then again, what if one of my friends turns out to be his niece? If the anecdotal evidence is true, hundreds of smart college grads have lost a promising job opportunity because their profile picture included a can of beer or their status updates were an ode to the lameness of their former boss.
When I was a resident assistant in the dorms I knew of more than one freshman that ended up in serious trouble because they friended their RA on Facebook and then posted videos of themselves jumping out of the second-story windows overlooking the lobby.
Self control in posting applies to the little things, too. Discretion is a virtue when it comes to the Internet.
Go ahead, use Facebook to share photos of your vacation with your friends. Announce your engagement. Catch up with your kindergarten crush. But just because Facebook invented the Places app doesn’t mean your friends need a running update on where you are all day. We don’t need to know about every fight you have with your boyfriend, or see that really embarrassing video of you when you got your wisdom teeth out. You never know how people might use these pieces of information against you.
It is time for us to stop blaming the Internet giants and start taking responsibility for our own privacy. A little restraint will go a long way.

Copyright 2010 The Daily Universe