FACEBOOK a$$holes.

This just cracked me up today - more than a few articles regarding Facebook.
 

What I’ve always found amazingly ironic is the fact people are so incredibly stupid as to volunteer all kinds of information up to a company and trust them with that information while at the same time they wouldn’t volunteer the same information to a bank, the government or any other organization. Better still - THEY PUT IT ALL UP ON THE INTERNET!

The internet is forever baby!

Until someone figures out a way to break the damn web all that information will be floating around on servers for years and years and years. People readily detailing where they went to school, where they work, where they live, who they associate with, what they like and don’t like, their political beliefs, their families... it’s all out there for the taking and if you think someone isn’t going to come along and make use of that information, well I’ve got a bridge to sell you!

I’ve gotten a bunch of requests from people to become their ‘friend’ and join Facebook and I simply won’t do it. I’ve been on the web for years and early on I was a proponent of personal privacy and related issues as they pertain to the web and I know full well how ‘social networking’ is really just another name for data mining.

So, FACEBOOK clowns, adherents, fans.... these are for you. When the day comes never let it be said you weren’t warned:

Writer Steve O'Hear shows that it's possible to eavesdrop on the private live chats of your Facebook friends by previewing your profile through the site's privacy settings.

Facebook shut down its chat function on Wednesday in response the security bug, a Facebook spokeswoman said in an e-mail to CNN.

*   *   *   *   *

The threat of seismic tumult still hangs over Silicon Valley. When earthquakes elsewhere in the world dominate the news, people get a little more sensitive to their own vulnerability in the Bay Area.

The ground might really have just given a twitch. Is it moving? Comparing Facebook’s latest product modifications to deadly natural disasters is probably a little bit inappropriate, but the psychological reaction doesn't seem all that different.

The social network modified its policies for handling user data once again as part of its F8 conference and release of the Open Graph API, and ever since it became clear that more information is being set as public by default and more is being shared with third parties, concerned Facebook users have been on jittery alert, perhaps prone to overreaction, concerned that something even bigger may be about to change.

 *   *   *   *   *

On Wednesday’s episode of a podcast called This Week in Technology, host Leo Laporte, a well-known tech pundit, said he had to search wikiHow, a how-to site, to figure out how to delete his Facebook account permanently.

After finding the delete button, which he said is hidden deep within the site’s menus, Laporte proceeded to delete his account during the online broadcast.

“That’s it. It’s gone,” he said during the show. “And I think that’s the right thing to do.”

 *   *   *   *   *

7 Things to Stop Doing Now on Facebook by Consumer Reports Magazine Wednesday, May 12, 2010