In no order of importance, the following is a growing list of concerns I have with Facebook.
1. Facebook employee perks
According to recent reports, there have been significant privacy concerns at the Facebook HQ. It seems that Facebook employees get a great perk – spying on whomever they want. It seems that an employee can learn a lot about you, without you ever knowing it. Not only that, but they can see information on whose profile you’ve been looking at. Do you really want that information tracked?
2. Facebook Applications
Every time you sign up to play Texas Hold’em or hit your friends with rotten pumpkins (if someone makes this app), you’re giving away all of your personal information to these application providers. How often do you when you play games on yahoo, or MSN first give away all of your information? There are even more applications that exist solely to extract your personal data, and to be used for whatever they want.
3. Targeted advertising
Now, although not a surprise, the latest deal with Microsoft may make the internet a smaller place. Next time you’re searching on the internet and you find yourself being served advertisements for beer when you’re on a random florist website, it may be thanks to your Facebook cookie. When Facebook launches their new “SocialAds” platform on November 6th, it will unleash a network of sites with information not only on your browsing habits, but on all of your personal information.
4. Personal Privacy
Remember the announcement of Facebook’s public listing search? Announced on September 5th, you will now be able to search on Google, or any other search engine and see the profile picture of one of the 50 million people on Facebook. Thankfully I’ve already opted out of this service, but for those of you who didn’t set your privacy controls, the display picture of you drinking with your buddies may be plastered all over the web for future employers to see.
This is just a short list of the growing fears of misuse of personal information; there are numerous other reasons why I would consider removing myself from Facebook. I already know that deep in the Google vaults is a long list of search queries, browsing history and information on who I associate with. How long until all of my information gets linked together and everything I do on the World Wide Web ends up in one person/company’s hands.
How concerned are you?