facebook

most of us are on facebook. i just read a lot of research reports, by students i'm TAing, about their privacy policy.

you should all go into privacy settings and tighten up your settings.

* those applications, a lot are stealing your information. remove them.
* turn off newsfeed, so that everyone doesnt know every little thing you do on facebook.
* facebook sells your information and buys information about you from other places. for instance, if you buy a birthday present from some participating store, it will post "bradley bought a gold necklace from so and so" to your facebook acct which will be put on your newsfeed. or it might say "bradley bought a plane ticket to new jersey". you don't want that. and facebook is creepy, so go turn that off.
* also, employers, schools, etc. use facebook to check your profile. they dont need to be your friend to see it. by default if i'm in someones network i can see it. and its not too hard to get in your network. and by the way, why should you want those people to see your profile anyway? go in and turn that off too.
* basically turn it all off.

and as you turn this stuff off, go back once more to make sure its all done, because facebook is really tricky about this too. the UI is intentionally cranky.

most people have their pants down on this one. why? because they trust facebook so much. but why? don't trust facebook, don't trust any of these big companies with this important info. they dont care about you, they care about $$. they world we're coming into, we need to get serious about protecting our privacy.