About ten years ago, my friends and family were abandoning their Myspace accounts and heading to Facebook. I fought it for a while but eventually assimilated and ended up with over 650 Facebook \u201cfriends\u201d at last count. Even my mother embraced the platform, very happy that she could see frequently updated photos of her many grandchildren and great-grandchildren instead of relying on printed photos passed around after family dinners. She abandoned telephone calls to spread news in favour of sharing it in a private group.<\/p>\n
Despite the popularity of Facebook, security minded people have been wary about much of the fun found there. For example, it\u2019s not safe to provide your Facebook user name and password to get the results of \u201cWhich Star Trek Captain are You?\u201d or to find out \u201cHow You Would Look as the Opposite Gender.\u201d Even text-based quizzes are suspect as they ask questions that are often required on banking or credit card sites. And those requests from friends to copy and paste a status if you really hate cancer may be just more annoying than anything else.<\/p>\n
Even if you avoid most of the traps, the ever-changing security features are difficult to manage. It seems like there is a new recommendation to keep your data \u201cprivate\u201d every few months. The apps connected to Facebook multiply like viruses, and maybe some of them are.<\/p>\n
Recently, we have learned that our Facebook data has been mishandled. It\u2019s not a typical breach. The data was collected using legitimate means, but then not deleted as promised and eventually used for nefarious purposes. Since the news broke, I\u2019ve seen several of my techie friends say that they will abandon their Facebook accounts. My friend count hasn\u2019t noticeably diminished, so only few of them have followed through, and it\u2019s probably too late to prevent the damage anyway.<\/p>\n
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and founder of Facebook, has promised to make changes to the platform to keep something like this from happening again. For the tens of millions of people whose information has been collected and abused, it\u2019s too little, too late. It\u2019s impossible to undo what has been done.<\/p>\n
In this time of almost daily data breaches, the only way to guarantee safety is to stay offline and keep your computer turned off. For most of us, that\u2019s not possible. Over the past 25 years, we have become more and more dependent on online resources for our work, education, shopping, news, and entertainment. The lure of social media keeps people using it, even though we are not the customers \u2013 we are the product.<\/p>\n
What do you plan to do? Will you continue to use the platform after making some settings changes or will you stay away from Facebook from now on? Tell us in the comments.<\/p>\n
Enjoyed the topic? Have a relevant anecdote? Disagree with the author? Leave your two cents on this post in the comments below, and our favourite response will win a $50 Amazon gift card. The competition closes two weeks from the date of publication, and the winner will be announced in the next Simple Talk newsletter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
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