Does what you say on facebook really stay on facebook?

You must have realized how much information we get about people on facebook. Apart from reuniting with my primary school friends after 25 years, I also know what they have done since then, which tastes they developed and who they hang out with. All this is quite nice but what if me and my friends are not the only people getting all this information?


I know many people, including me, is very grateful to facebook for reconnecting with long lost friends and making messaging and sharing stuff somewhat simpler. It really reflects the spirit of the age: have hundreds of facebook “friends”, invite them for a game of poker or put them on friends for sale, send them good karma with just a click. But never really contact them for anything substantial. Perhaps I’m a bit old style and I still write long e-mails on my facebook but this is also disappearing slowly. Facebook defines a new kind of messaging which is between e-mail and mobile phone texting.

But there is another side to this. I know that most people do not read the privacy policies but they contain some interesting information. For example on facebook, by saying “I agree” to the privacy policy we give them the right to share our information with other companies for advertising or other purposes. These “other purposes” includes legal purposes and commercial data mining. Apparently you can choose not to share your information but there is no evidence or guarantee that this request is honored. This adds on the surveillance we are already subject to and everyday there are people investigating other people through facebook and other social networking sites; schoolmasters checking on students, police looking for army objectors, etc. There are plenty of news about this.

The privacy policy states “Facebook also collects information about you from other sources, such as newspapers and instant messaging services. This information is gathered regardless of your use of the Web Site. We use the information about you that we have collected from other sources to supplement your profile ...” This means once we create a facebook profile they gather info and investigate us even when we do not use their services. This is a very Orwellian thing. Every fascist government wants to have a comprehensive file about each of its subjects and with facebook we are volunteering for this. According to the facebook agreement, the information and material we put there are still in their property even after we delete them.

If you are too lazy like me and 89% of facebook users to read the privacy policy, I recommend you to take a look at this research paper on facebook threats to privacy. It made me say “what? really?” a few times while reading. There is also a very interesting presentation which shows who is in charge of this information collecting project called facebook. It claims that the main US national security agencies are behind it.

If you are using facebook, do it wisely and do not put information you do not want to share with everyone. You won’t know who is getting it.