As a now terrified member of Facebook, I have no idea who has access to my private pictures, statuses, messages, and personal information. In class, Professor Pitney told those of us with Facebook accounts to exercise caution when using the social networking site, as we can be tracked down by potential employers or others. It concerns me that the pictures and information we post on Facebook can jeopardize our employment, but I am more worried about how Facebook now keeps our information as a "permanent record." That's right, even into your eighties, Facebook could keep pictures of you "raging" at TNC. Furthermore, we don't even know who else has access to our personal information now that Facebook has begun to give users' personal information out to third-party websites. Third-party websites supposedly just look at a Facebook user's profile information in an attempt to personalize the online experience, but if Facebook gives this information to websites, who else could Facebook have given the information? While it doesn't bother me if my online experience is personalized, I certainly don't want to be judged in the future based on pictures of my actions in college, and I know that I am not the only one. Four democratic senators have asked Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg to change privacy settings on the website, but he hasn't done anything to fulfill the request. One of their objections to the privacy settings is that users must opt-out of sharing information with other sites, and the steps to opt-out are complicated. So with Google, Amazon, and Facebook all keeping watch over user activity, we all have good reason to be paranoid.
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