Facebook and privacy concerns

So, is Facebook to blame if we unabashedly share our thoughts, state of mind, pictures of our honeymoon, wild partying and everything else that earlier used to be accessible to just our close circle of friends? Fb is a god-send for social exhibitionists - people who want the world to know that they drank Ethiopian coffee at Starbucks or their newly found globe-trotter status. But what about those of us who like to lead a relatively mundane existence sharing our life's details with a select few?

This is where the issue becomes one of Facebook's notion of privacy versus yours. The raison d'etre of any venture is to make money. It would be naive of us to believe that we could get all these soc net goodies free for life. And definitely not when we visit websites and happily click that we "Like" the content. We leave a massive trail behind us on the internet that makes it far too tempting for soc net sites not to monetise.

An alternative for Facebook would have been to let you maintain your privacy by asking you to pay for it and becoming a "Premium member". But we users of the internet are notorious for our extreme dislike to pay for anything on the internet. This would have inspired a mass exodus from Facebook that would have crippled the website permanently. That leaves Facebook with little choice but to try various stunts and push the envelope till the law enforcing authorities wake up to rein it in.

So, what does one do if the soc net website constantly comes up with new and improved ideas to monetise your life by sharing your profile with all and sundry. And it does that surreptitiously by adding new settings that require you to be smarter than Vint Cerf to beat the system. And what should one do if it insists that the default privacy setting is "Everyone", rather than "Only Friends"?

The golden rule while putting up anything on a social networking site is to upload just those aspects of your life that you wouldnt be embarassed of 5 years down the line or in your next job interview or while catching up with your ex-spouse.

That is exercising user caution. Like all things in life, only what we choose to keep to ourselves remain private. Rest is for the world to consume.