I have been thinking a lot about privacy and how hard it is to come by these days. The internet, while useful in a myriad of ways, is also very unforgiving of mistakes and keeps an on-going catalogue of things that should be allowed to fade away gracefully over time. I used to think of myself as a private person and was shown recently that I am, in fact, quite the opposite.
An innocent-looking app on my phone, foursquare, has the potential to let everyone know where I am at all times. The built-in GPS in my phone does the same thing and, if you know how to use it, you can figure out anyone's location to within a metre of where they actually are. That scares me. A lot. To know that by clicking on that app all the people on my facebook account will know where I am at any given time is frightening, but what really keeps me awake at night is knowing that most of those people do not have their account privacy settings as high as I do and so might be leaking my information to anyone who cares to look for it. I realize that was a very long sentence but I am keeping it that way to emphasize the vehemence of the words.
Think about it. Nothing is ever really 'gone' or 'deleted'. It's just removed from that area. I had a blog a few years back when I was going through my horrific divorce and losing my best friend at the same time and I made the mistake of posting some very personal thoughts/ranting and raving like a lunatic about the two of them. I deleted them after because I realized that the internet was no place to work shit out on, but my ex managed to find one of the entries I thought had been deleted. Luckily, his email regarding it was peppered with an incredibly devastating amount of profanity so the two sort of cancelled each other out and had no bearing on the divorce proceedings.
Point is, shit does not get erased from the internet. It remembers everything. Be careful. Big Brother really and truly is watching and if he doesn't like what he sees, he will delete your profile and ban you from facebook. And then how would you build your farm?
