A lot of my friends are up at arms about a recent change to the popular social networking site, facebook.com.  They have added in an aggregate feed on each user and what activities that they’ve been up to while on the site and what recent things they have changed.  For instance, on my feed you can see who my friends are, what groups I’ve joined and when I’ve changed my status.

The problem is that most of the people on facebook have not idea the sensitivity of the information they post online.  On of my friends joined one of the groups complaining about the private information that is now easier to find when on his profile just lines below his stating that facebook was creepy was his home address, cell and home phone numbers and birthday; all information that is more useful in stalking, or identity theft, than what groups the person is involved in. 

Comm. theory says that people tend to blackbox mediated communication and that when they communicate online regardless of the site they believe that it is either only viewable by them or that only their friends will read it.  The truth is that most things you write online are forever committed to the Internet’s memory, if you will, thanks to sites like google’s archive and the wayback machine.  What I find interesting is that the feeds off of facebook are simply illuminating that fact for the throngs of people who are less than careful about what information that they are putting online; it’s essentially comparable to looking at yourself in a mirror and realizing that you died your hair purple, have ‘fool’ written in black crayon across your foor head and seeing a ‘kick me’ sign on your back.

Perhaps this will cause people to either flock away from facebook or think a bit more cautiously about what they post online.

p.s. This post is a feed into facebook as well; the original site is http://talk.bearla.com.