Film, Gadgets, and Geekdom

I will not import my blog entries to a data mining service. I am clearing out all of my information as well. Every piece of information you give Facebook is making them money. Your information could even be given to the US Government. Call me crazy, but the fact that Facebook can take your personal property and claim it as their own makes shivers go down my spine.

From Facebook’s Privacy Policy:
“Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service through the operation of the service (e.g., photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalized experience.”

“Advertisements that appear on Facebook are sometimes delivered (or “served”) directly to users by third party advertisers. They automatically receive your IP address when this happens. These third party advertisers may also download cookies to your computer, or use other technologies such as JavaScript and “web beacons” (also known as “1×1 gifs”) to measure the effectiveness of their ads and to personalize advertising content.”

From Facebook’s Terms of Service:
“By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.”

You call it Facebook. I call it violating my privacy. Be careful what you put on that website.

Some of you may think me crazy or just paranoid. However, keep this in mind: me being paranoid has turned out to be correct more often than incorrect. My thought process was started by the video on this site. You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to, but just be careful of what you put on Facebook or MySpace.