Privacy Maven

That is the larger issue: we really don’t know the longstanding implications and consequences of social networking and with it, the “digital litter” that we scatter and which we may have little or no control over in the future. Today, CNN reports on social networking’s sinister side. Companies like Facebook may betray members, yet at the same time, social networkers must also assume personal responsibility and exercise judgment and discretion.

Social networking sites are comparable to a global electronic village, and using them is akin to chatting to your neighbors over the back fence, sharing photos, gossip and updates about your social life. One such site, Facebook, now has 39 million users.

The information that we post about ourselves on the Web, called “digital litter” by technology experts, is a bonanza for fraudsters and marketing companies.

Details such as date of birth and where you work provide valuable clues for identity thieves, while status updates saying you are going on vacation could be tantamount to giving burglars the key to your house.

On the other hand, in the spirit of attempting to make the best of this erosion of privacy, London-based consultant, educator, and journalist, Steve O’Hear notes that Facebook users who are savvy may be able to use Google’s indexing of their profiles to their advantage:

Facebook results will inevitably end up pretty high in Google’s index, so a search for my name through Google — were I to opt in — would probably bring up my Facebook profile before many of my other social web presences, let alone what others have written about me. Presuming this works out to be the case, the end result is that I now have more control over what “digital litter” you see first, because I can edit my profile any time I like, and the search engine will re-index the results. In other words, I now at least have a chance to influence how I’m represented on Google and online in general.