Private parts

Call me old fashioned but when I throw out mail of mine, I always rip up the part that details my name and address. Why do I do this? Well mainly for identity fraud reasons but also because I don't want it flying out the bin and some stranger seeing this information. But this no information in comparison to what I have displayed on my facebook profile. 

In the 21st century were all about privacy. Build high fences so your neighbor can't see you walk around naked, have tinted windows, private phone numbers and the list can go on. But while we are excluding ourselves from the outside world, inside we are opening up our personal details for the whole world to see. We will jump onto facebook and update our status to announce that we are home from work, or at work or hating on the university library. 

I like to consider facebook as some sort of bragging rights for people to announce things to rub in the faces of other people. For example, when I went to Thailand and it was cold weather in Melbourne and during the university semester, I did announce that I was sipping cocktails on phi phi island. Some people are very private with their use of facebook and other social network sites; closing it off to only people they are friends with. But some can have anyone access their photo's either tagged of them or ones they uploaded, personal details such as address, phone number, education and workplace. The only thing missing is your atm card number!

This gets me to the question of privacy. What is it?

Privacy I would say Is just keeping things to yourself, and not placing yourself or your opinions out on the social networking sites, as once its out there, its always out there. I have friends of mine that have professional jobs as police officers or high school teacher's and they either don't have a facebook page or it kept to the minimal where only their name or a fake caricatured name is made up with no picture to prevent a hacking of their privacy. I have even heard of extents where companies will look up prospective employees on the internet and look at facebook profiles to see the true character of the applicant. 

So my word of advice, if you’re not keen of people knowing all about you before they have met you, keep your information to a low on networking sites. Otherwise go for your life, the rules of privacy have all been but broken!