The Internet is over; also, for porn

Don’t even THINK your mother won’t see what you said about her.

We’ve ranted about Facebook before; its inflexibility, its unreliability, the fact that Viggo Mortensen won’t Friend u- oh, never mind that last bit. We’ve hardly even gotten started on the privacy leaks, and it’s a good thing, because they’ve just made them much worse. Fortunately, there’s a useful little tool you can simply add to your Bookmarks that will tell you where your Facebook profile is vulnerable; it’s called PrivacyScanner, and it’s from ReclaimPrivacy.org.

Here’s what it says about my personal profile:

secure    Instant Personalization is currently sharing personal information with non-Facebook websites. you are opted-out of the Instant Personalization feature

secure – all of your personal information is at restricted to your friends or closer

secure – all of your contact information is at restricted to your friends or closer

secure – all of your friends, tags, and connections information is at restricted to your friends or closer

INSECURE – your friends can accidentally share your personal information. Prevent friends from sharing your data

secure – you have blocked all known applications that could leak your personal information

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What can we say? It’s always been hard to get good help, but now it’s easier than ever to confirm that they’re so … not good. If this happens on your own site, you’ve no-one to blame but yourself, for setting the privacy settings to “broadcast to the entire universe” but there’s more of a sting at setting something to Private on a trusted site and finding out that what you mean by private and what they mean by private are different.

Or mutable.

Hundreds of thousands of users were unpleasantly surprised earlier this year to find that Facebook contents are now visible to search engines, and to people who are not logged in to Facebook. While Facebook is one of the biggest offenders, it’s really just the most obvious example.

Do. Not. Use. The. World’s. Most. Powerful. Communication. Tool. To. Keep. Secrets.

It just doesn’t work.

Do not make a private blog and enable an RSS feed, unless you just don’t have enough drama in your life. You wouldn’t use a safe deposit box that was located in the middle of a public square, or put your jewels in a safe in someone else’s basement, would you? If you’ve got files and information that you want kept private, but need to put online for whatever reason, do not do this on a third-party site like Facebook or Twitter; their priorities are not yours, and if it comes down to a choice between protecting you and monetizing the business, guess who’ll come out the loser? Own the land you stand on, and maintain your fences; get your own site and make sure it’s professionally maintained and protected.

Ahem.