Social Networking Sites and Your Privacy

Many of our clients use Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc. with two huge misconceptions:

1. “My page or my ‘space’ belongs to me.” This is totally false. It belongs to the company whose service you’re using. They own the site, they own/rent the servers and essentially they own any and all material that you share on it. In fact, many of these companies mine the data from their users and then pass it along to other companies for profit.
2. “I can just delete info about me and it’s gone forever.” 100% wrong. Servers keep logs of deleted data and often archive it. Anything you’ve ever said or done on the Internet is likely to be stored somewhere – waiting for someone to retrieve it – either you or someone else. (Past or present employers, spouses, friends, law enforcement, etc.)

Social networking via the Internet is a fantastic tool. Please keep in mind to never post anything that you would not mind someone digging up about you in the future. Respect the permanence.