On his blog, marketing leader Seth Godin pointed out that it’s a little late to start worrying about privacy on the Internet; we signed it away the moment we handed our personal information over to the social networking machine. The main thing when it comes to privacy on the Internet is this: Don’t share any more than you want to, because as soon as you’ve shared something, it’s out there. You can’t take it back.
It’s a matter of technology, of legal precedent, and it’s a matter of the way that our culture is evolving. Perhaps most of all, it’s simply a matter of the Internet being incompatible with privacy by its very definition. The Internet can be thought of not so much as a web or a network or a “series of tubes,” but as a single unit where all of our information goes. Anyone can add anything they want, and anyone can take anything they want out of it. If you’re sharing information, just assume that anybody who could possibly want it has access to it. Some companies may offer some degree of privacy in that they won’t sell your information to advertisers, but advertisers have plenty of info on you already.
