History of social network use reveals your identity
I post this story because it provides more reasons regarding your and my personal privacy and why I closed my Facebook account. See my Journal posting for May 4, 2010. Incidentally, when I actually tried to close it, I discovered that you cannot actually close the account. No, you can only “deactivate” it. Which means that all the information you have already freely given to them remains in the memory vaults of Facebook and who-knows-where it went from there: numerous marketers? Government databanks? How would you know?
Fortunately, I had given Facebook only the barest of details to open my account, so I am not worried about that information. But I do have grave concerns for your and my young relatives and their friends who are growing up in an Orwellian world and who innocently provide all kinds of personal information to “the Borg.” Now comes this from New Scientist magazine:
When you sign up to a membership group on a social networking site you may be revealing more than you bargained for. An experimental website has managed to identify the names of people who visit it, by harvesting information about the groups they belong to. It's a trick marketing teams and scammers would love to copy. (The remainder of the article is here:) http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18924-history-of-social-network-use-reveals-your-identity.html?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=dn18924