The Perils of Interconnectedness

Yesterday I looked at the facebook page of someone and I saw among his status updates of how he was able to find information about the person just by googling that person's username. Self-conscious, I did a brief check on mine to see if this profile is pretty locked in tight, and the little paranoid self of mine was pretty satisfied. There are just some things that I would like to keep private even if nothing about them is incriminating or interesting. Why should the world care if I just ate my breakfast on twitter or that I liked a specific article in CNN? Its no different when I go to Jollibee Katipunan to eat breakfast and read the free Star newspaper. 

Perhaps to some level we do care. When I was a teenager, I was happily fond of such technologies as it made knowing my crush a little bit easier - there was no need to make the effort to befriend his friends just to know whether or not he has a girlfriend, or God forbid, a boyfriend. Teenagers have it easier now that there is foursquare, so they could make all the stupid alibis about running into them by chance (which totally removes the concept of serendipity, how unromantic) 

Then there is the argument, "there is nothing wrong with it as people put those information  willingly." However, what about those pictures which my friends tagged without me knowing or actually approving - someone actually sees them before I can untag myself. Gone were the days when mistakes of the past can easily be attributed to the follies of childhood and forgotten. Now it will come back to haunt you during job search time in full color, filling up your profile with what should be statistically inaccurate data as studies have already shown that a teenage brain is not fully developed to make correct decisions and yet, you shall be judge by the decisions made during your incapacity for the rest of your life. Also, there are information that anyone who could have put forth online thinking it was secure or harmless, but when aggregated could be harmful in the long run and it could not be deleted due to the number of back-up archives, making you lose control over it forever. 

When the internet was still new, and people were connecting to it via 56kbps dial-up modems (does anyone remember Edsamail?) there was a good level of anonymity. Every time you log in you get a different ip-address. People were free to choose their username and dispose of it whenever they want. Now we have Facebook which basically did away with those and instead posted our real identities over the internet making us vulnerable to identity theft. How vulnerable? By posting your real name and birthday on it, geeks can hax your credit card. 

But my real beef with Facebook is not just with what appears above; the mere fact that people can rifle through my life via my wall, suddenly ask "Close kayo ni____". First, what do you care? Second, "not really" then there's the follow-up questions of "and why is he/she posting on your wall" argh. We're not close okay! I'm friends with him/her because it seemed not polite not to add her back especially if he/she is a co-worker. Or third, suddenly it makes some people feel that just because we are Facebook friends we are now best buds. This post from tumblr just about sums it up  \/

I should probably make a username based Facebook to keep my lives separate.