FACEBOOK - Why give a megacorp all your private info?

How angry is the world at Facebook for devouring every morsel of personal information we are willing to feed it?

A few months back, four geeky college students, living on pizza in a computer lab downtown on Mercer Street, decided to build a social network that wouldn’t force people to surrender their privacy to a big business. It would take three or four months to write the code, and they would need a few thousand dollars each to live on.

They gave themselves 39 days to raise $10,000, using an online site, Kickstarter, that helps creative people find support.

It turned out that just about all they had to do was whisper their plans. “We were shocked,” said one of the four, Dan Grippi, 21. “For some strange reason, everyone just agreed with this whole privacy thing.” They announced their project on April 24. They reached their $10,000 goal in 12 days, and the money continues to come in: as of Tuesday afternoon, they had raised $23,676 from 739 backers. “Maybe 2 or 3 percent of the money is from people we know,” said Max Salzberg, 22.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/nyregion/12about.html?hp

http://gizmodo.com/5530178 /

and More Reasons Why You Should Still Quit Facebook

http://gizmodo.com/5534736/seriously-this-is-why-you-sh...



It truly amazes me -- everyone was incensed when Total Information Awareness was floated. Yet a scant few years later, people willfully provide far more intrusive information about themselves with nary a whisper of offense. And the availability of this information isn't restricted to intrusive security people -- seemingly anyone with a casual desire for "friendship" can access incredibly minute information about Facebook "exposers."

but rarely give any details aside from the country I live in and the country i came from. Even in private discussions i dont give many details, emails work better for that.

and my so called "friends" which are usually collegues or aquaintances.... if i want to send messages I usually do emails the instant chat feature is the only thing i like to chat across the atlantic for free

I'd love to see the pictures posted there.. but they wanted a lot of private information to create an account.

I decided the pictures could wait..

I figure if people really want info on me they can get it anyways through numerous other channels. There's nothing on my Facebook page that can't be found at a bunch of other places, online and off.

Like I say though, I do understand why others may not feel so comfortable.

i didn't have to give up my SS number. didn't require a credit card. oh noes! facebook knows that i like underground hip-hop and black metal!

:)

knows that I listen to Diana Krall, enjoy outdoor activities, am a fan of Neil Gaiman or that I love my pets. I have a LinkedIn account that has more detailed info about my employment history that's publicly available, as is my IMDB listing. Rosanne Barr was one of my FB friends and she recently quit because a stalker somehow got a hold of her personal email address through Facebook.I can see how it could be an issue for some people, but not for the majority of us.

stool and urine samples, plus the first 2/3 of your soul.

Satan said, "Yea, with your soul and four Yen, I can buy a cup of Starbucks.

why should you worry? :)

but, yeah, if you're online, people will gather information about you - people who do data mining - whether it's here or on fb.

you can choose not to post information about yourself - or what information to post about yourself.

:D

About google knowing everything about us. Playing devil's advocate I asked: OK... so Google knows I prefer Charmin... now what? They show me an ad that might save me a few bucks on tissue?

But he argued that employers are going to start using that data to do psychological analyses on potential employees. If that's true, he may have a point.

:D It's not that hard to clean up your tracks on FB if you want to keep a low profile. It is getting kind of bloated as a site though with tons of glitches. I'll check this out too.

What is all this hand wringing?

There isn´t even a guarantee that what I´ve put there is true.

No one verifies it.

The most personal thing they know about me is when I log in and when I log out.

If some stupid business considers that information worth paying for, I suggest that
company´s shareholders revolt.

Everything else is common knowledge.

In addition to registering with the bare minimum of personal info, I gave them a fake date of birth which makes me 90+ years old (but my fake year and fake age is hidden from everyone). One of my friends misspelled both his first and last name.

Facebook doesn't have much info on me. Nothing all that useful, anyway.

After reading the article, though, that project sounds far more intriguing than Facebook ever was.

to sell me something. I am so pissed off. That is forever unless I change my email address whichv I don't want to do.

:party:

maybe I just don't get it, but....there isn't really any private info on my FB account.

I don't have my phone number, address or SSN (which afaik, isn't asked for anywhere on the site).

I do have my employer, but anyone who googles my name can find that easily, anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like how FB is handling privacy, and I don't like having my information (private or not) shared with businesses all over the internet.

But, anyone who's going to enter info that's really private on FB clearly doesn't have a lot of concerns about privacy.

I'm on Facebook, but FB has none of my private info, let alone all of it.

and of course, I couldn't resist and had to share it on FB, lol.