Privacy & Confidentiality

In a world of Facebook and Myspace you can already log in and find someones name, birthday, and even phone number within seconds. Through Twitter or Facebook status updates you can often even see what they had for breakfast, and now with sites like FourSquare, which allows you to check in at locations throughout the city, you can see where they are at any given moment and how often they go there.

Of course, with all this information being updated every minute, the issues of privacy and confidentiality come up a great deal. While all of social media's users are voluntarily posting everything there is to post about themselves, they are often doing so without recognizing the consequences. It is not until someone you don't want having that information uses it against you that you realize exactly how important your privacy is.

We live in a world where most people are used to having their every move chronicled online, but should that be the case? Most social networking sites provide privacy settings that, when used correctly, can help protect your information from the people who you don't want having it. The problem with these settings is that they are usually opt-in, not opt-out. This means that by default all your information is out in the open, for the world to see.

The next time you update your status, fill out a profile, or check-in somewhere, think about who may be seeing this information, and what they may be using it for. If there is even a single friend, family member, or boss who you do not want seeing what you are about to post, then perhaps you should hold of posting it until you properly configure your privacy settings.