I am a terrorist, murderer and purveyor of porn
Sorry ignore the title. I’m not really any of those. I’m actually just trying to prove a point. That social networking and tools can sometime expose just a little bit too much about you. Not convinced?
As the writer of this article as soon as I hit publish the blogosphere, some would say the precursor to the current generation of social networks will light up. My name will be all over the place associated with my rather controversial blog title. Facebook, myspace, friend feed and all the other re-post services I use
will post a link to the story. My friends, family, followers and followers of followers and finally hundreds of random bored people will stumble across this story.
If I had actually been writing about something unsavoury my name would be mud in minutes There would very likely be police knocking on my door within hours. Even if I deleted the post after realising my mistake most if not all of it would be available somewhere.
As the reader you may think you’re immune and anonymous. You’re not.
Firstly and worst of all, simply by viewing this post you could be endangering yourself. Anyone who subscribes to mybloglog or any similar tracker has automatically exposed that they’ve read this post. Anyone who subscribes to my feed has just exposed that they read my blog and hence are now associated with a very naughty man.
Anyone who comments or does a pingback has exposed their love of illegal porn. People who re-post, social bookmark or republish my RSS would have just placed the title of this post on their pages.
If you Digg me (and please do) you would have alienated yourself from the community. If you buzzed me (once again, do so) and you use Yahoo Messenger you just exposed that you enjoyed my article to all of your messenger friends.
I could keep going. There are just so many ways that you can tell so many people a dark secret or two about yourself.
In conclusion. I am not saying social tools are a bad thing. I’m just asking you all to think a little harder about how you use them and how much about yourself you would like to expose. Go check those privacy settings on facebook, see what you’re comfortable with. I know after this I may have to do the same thing too.
If you’d like to help continue this experiment please leave a comment, digg it, buzz it, share it, follow me, basically spread it around both passively and actively. Come back and share what your networks (both real and virtual) reactions were. Use the sharethis icon on the bottom of the post or follow the links throughout the article.
Related posts:
