Facebook: your pact with the devil

In bed with Facebook, image from Mashable http://on.mash.to/FPT7XZ

I’m as frustrated as everyone else at constantly shifting Facebook privacy settings, and have struggled to keep my posts, and my kids posts private like many others. It’s a difficult place to be at times when you’d like to keep a personal life separate from a professional identity. It’s particularly worrying when dealing with kids’ Facebook accounts, even though these are the ‘digital natives’ we hear so much about there’s very little awareness of future consequences of everything being available for all to see. I even keep an extra account open so I can check on the privacy setting of their accounts – how much do I really want a stranger to see about my kids? How much is

Image via Nik Hewitt (http://nikhewitt.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/facebook-and-you.html)

safe? The apparent default setting of “open to all” every time the feature set changes does not help matters and means that a war of attrition is constantly in progress against creeping privacy invasion. So much for ‘friendly Facebook’ eh?

It gets worse though. It seems that some organisations, including colleges and government agencies in the USA are demanding usernames and passwords for prospective student and employees facebook accounts