Facebook, you are now my bitch; next up - the rest of my teenage internet angst
Facebook has been reduced to a shell of it’s former self on my compy. The privacy issues were too much for me to be comfortable with, especially with Mark Zuckerberg’s attitude towards privacy now known. I plan to keep my account open strictly for page management for Red Feather Vintage. I have deleted all cookies in my main browser, Firefox, and blocked facebook.com from dropping any new cookies on my machine, what with their Like buttons popping up all over the internet. I now run Facebook exclusively in an SSB using Mozilla Prism - this contains the problem somewhat as Prism gives each SSB it’s own set of cookies to munch on and prevents Facebook from tracking my normal browsing habits in my main browser.
This issue of behavioral advertising is nothing new, which is why the Facebook privacy issue scares me so much. Let’s say that Facebook just did a horrible job of managing their data collection efforts - let’s say that they over-communicated in an unprofessional manner showing too much naked ambition. What data is the company that does this well collecting?
Think about Google Ads… Google Ads are ubiquitous across the entire web and each text ad is served up from Google’s own private servers. This means that, theoretically, Google could be tracking every site that you visit that implements Google Ads - pair this with the search results and email attached to your account - and you start to realize that you’ve given much more of yourself up to an advertising company than you may have realized. Google appears to care about keeping our data private - but it’s not unlike them to give up data to governments that ask it of them - and then there are always mistakes.
We give up a lot about ourselves when we make the choice to use a free service while completely disregarding the privacy policy - it seems that we are now swinging back towards taking privacy more seriously. Renewed review on what you share, regardless of whether you consider it “private”, is probably a good idea.
My name is mine - I’m reclaiming it. Find yourself a kick ass screen name and go crazy like it’s 1999.
