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[Important] Facebook and Internet privacy concerns
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This is a transcript (http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=114163862) of a useful story that was broadcast on NPR's news-magazine All Things Considered yesterday. The series of which it is part is headlined "The End of Privacy". While this declaration is perhaps somewhat extreme the article points out something very important, something that is rarely discussed
People are more likely to disclose inappropriately personal information to sites that have a "cheezy" aesthetic. Formal sites put us on our guard. Information gatherers are aware of this trend and are beginning to develop cheezy sites to circumvent our instinctual self-censorship
Which leads me to something that is not mentioned into the article. Facebook.
Doubtless you have seen dozens, even hundreds of Facebook quizzes, the "What X are you?" applications. The question that may not have occurred to you is this, "Where did these applications come from? Why were they created?". They were created to extract information from you. The Pizza parlour sells your information, Facebook does to. This is facebook's sole reason for existing; the sale of your personal information is its business model.
To make matters worse, by adding an application you authorize it to rifle through your profile and all the other information that Facebook has about you. Big Brother is watching.
We are fast approaching a world in which it is possible to have near literal total information awareness, Facebook and The Internet are starting to create a digital paper-trail, over which we have no control that is a permanent record of us. Information is power, power over you. In Terry Gilliam's film 1985 Brazil the Ministry of Information (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xNnRBksvOU) grew to consume 7% of the GNP. In the real, modern, world there is no Ministry of Information as such, but the sums spent to accumulate information, both by government and by industry likely exceed that 7% figure by a great deal. (You must appreciate that there are a great many businesses which fundamentally are actually information related companies, even though they seem to do something else; the post office is on example, Facebook is another.)
This is not intended to scare you, it is simply a warning to be careful and an official administrative recommendation to not add applications you do not have to, in particular quiz applications.