For those of you who have never seen the movie “Network”, (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074958/), I am paraphrasing the character Howard Beale, the “mad prophet of the airwaves”, who strikes a chord with his TV audience when he tells them to turn off their TV’s, go to the window, and shout “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

What are we giving up as we merrily update our status?  Potential passwords:  birthdays, anniversaries, graduation dates, names of pets, children and friends?  Vacation and other travel plans so burglars know when your home will be vacant?  Work information: conferences, co-workers, work locations? Phone numbers, email addresses?  Lots of pictures that someone can use to add verisimilitude to your supposed acquaintance?   Social networking sites are a gold mine for spammers, identity theft, spear phishing, whaling and advanced persistent threats.  Companies are even jumping on the Facebook bandwagon, creating Facebook groups for employees.  But these groups, private or not, are still hosted by Facebook and can provide another target for attackers (insiders and outsiders).

Service providers and their partner websites plant cookies galore on your computer, track your browsing and even upload your address book.  Even when a service provider has a clear privacy policy that you can live with, the policy almost always has a disclaimer stating that you may link to web sites from the service provider that does not apply the same privacy policy.  Vendors may also change their policies so you can’t assume that the policy you agreed to is still extant.

I recently cancelled my Facebook, LinkedIn and Plaxo accounts for several reasons.  First, I was getting way too much spam, which has been greatly reduced.  Second, I was getting too many invitations from people I didn’t know or didn’t want to add to my network.  The last straw on LinkedIn was an alleged bio-weapons expert from Afghanistan.  Third, I am thinking less is more.   I don’t want to live my life like I am on a TV reality show.    I have a few friends who know me well.  Every acquaintance is not a friend.  When I have something to contribute, I can provide content to a blog or a website.

So think about not being one of the 800 million notches in Facebook’s belt and fattening the pockets of people who sell your information. Form some exclusive mailing lists – like people who are really friends or family.  Use some great privacy and anonymity services and even pay for them:

http://www.guard-privacy-and-online-security.com/international-anonymizers.html

http://filesharefreak.com/2008/11/29/the-10-best-free-web-proxies-for-anonymous-surfing/