Lock the doors to Facebook

The other night my friend's car was broken into. His iPod, camera and check book were all stolen. All the windows were intact, he had simply forgotten to lock his doors. Before he even realized what had hit him, he had also lost nearly 600 dollars from his bank account. Carelessness can cost. No one would deliberately leave their car doors unlocked overnight in the middle of the city. Nor would anyone leave their credit card just laying out on the front porch. Or stash their personal diary away at the local public library for anyone who was curious. But many people do similar things everyday on the internet without giving it a second thought. Sometimes we need to be careful to lock the door behind us.

For instance, that same friend moved in with me a few months back. He had never heard of Facebook, so I put in a plug for it, saying something to the effect that Facebook was the social network where you could feel safe about your information. Four months later, by checking out his Facebook profile you can find out his age, hometown, birthday, cell phone number, email address, religion, apartment complex, current place of employment and even that his car was recently broken into. This doesn't even include the information you could glean from the hundreds of pictures and posts on his wall. And all that information is available for anyone at our university to peruse or abuse. Even information that seems inconsequential can be dangerous if put in the hands of someone with malicious intent. You never know who is looking at your profile.

Two years ago, students at MIT conducted a fascinating study on privacy concerns and Facebook. Two things stood out to me. 1. How easy it was for them to find a way to retrieve large amounts of information . 2. How much information people allowed to be publicly available. This study was conducted before Facebook was open to all comers and before the Facebook API was released. Both of these changes bring additional risks to those using Facebook. There is also growing concern with regards to law enforcement, school administration, and employers using information against Facebook users. And you never know which online predators are creeping around your profile. All of this suggests to me that Facebook might not be as safe as I suggested to my friend that it was. Facebook is just one example of the potential dangers we face with Web 2.0.

Ultimately in a system designed for sharing information there is bound to be some leaks, regardless of the precautions taken to guard the system. Although I do believe that companies have a moral responsibility to do more to warn and protect their users, when it comes down to it, users really need to be more defensive of their information. We can learn two lessons from my unlucky friend. First, lock the doors. Choose an intelligent password. Be careful to log out when using public computers. Don't share private information in public ways. Second, don't leave valuables where they may be vulnerable. If my friend hadn't left possessions worth hundreds of dollars in his car then not locking the door wouldn't have mattered much. If information about yourself could be harmful in the wrong hands, then the only way to make sure it doesn't get there is by not publishing it online in the first place. So next time, make sure to lock the doors and bring in anything you don't want to lose.