Privacy Isn’t the Default
There’s a bit of a snit happening between family members down the street over some spilled communication. Oops. They thought nobody outside their inner circle of gossips could access their tweets, wall posts, and text sends. Ah…no. Privacy isn’t the default. You have to set it yourself, and keep on setting it over and over again, on all your various social networking sites and applications as well as on all of your e-appliances–cell phones, iPods, iPhones, Blackberries, computers…. And everyone you send to also has to have their privacy settings set not to broadcast publicly to the world wide web, else it becomes part of that ever expanding body of electronic data that’s saturating the public domain of cyberspace. So, if and when you decide to start dissing your next door neighbor’s yard or complaining bitterly about your cousin, do know it’s publicly available for anyone anywhere to read and pass on, including those about whom you’re speaking unless and until everybody in your circle has set their privacy settings appropriately on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Linked-In…as well as on all their various electronic gadgets. And, remember, both the social networking sites and the electronic gadgets regularly do programming and software upgrades that resets those settings to the public default.
Just a heads up.
Tags: electronic communication, Facebook, lack of privacy, privacy, public default, public domain, social networks, texting, tweets, Twitter