Facebook reveals everything about you-if you let it

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Yes, only if you let it.

If your life revolves around facebook, you might want to take a step back and reconsider the type of  information you put on your info page, your wall and your photo albums. Even your friends list tells a lot about yourself.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange considers facebook to be 'the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented'. Assange calls Facebook "the world's most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations and the communications with each other," and claims Facebook may allow the government to gather details without a subpoena.


I quite agree with Assange. Read the article here.


We may be forgiven to get really personal and intimate with our facebook profile.  We post everything from our love and admiration toward someone and professing our hatred and political views for the whole world to see. But all that is done knowing exactly just that. It's public. And that is what we should be reminding ourselves every now and then.


What we consider general information about ourselves now may be privileged and extremely private ten years on, depending on where we end up then. 


But then again, considering that our lives are very much connected even in real life, there is no stopping anyone from digging our horrid past, should there be any.  Not even Assange could hide from that irony. And as invincible as Taib may appear, his ugly past have been continuously exhumed  from deep within.


Therefore, looking from the perspective of expose and a 'need to know' policy, all we need to do as simple netizen is be true to ourselves, be honest, sincere and humble.


Unless you work in the intelligence agency and your very existence is designed with lies and deceit, you're basically safe. 


Talking about being safe and staying safe, do remember that whatever you post online may be used against you and your loved ones in real life.  Life on facebook is no different compared to life in the real world.  Since you have decided to get personal, it doesn't matter which network you choose to belong to, you still have to respect people's boundaries and feelings. It's easy to overlook the fact that our friends get notified of everything we do on facebook. Yes, there is the privacy setting but sometimes we forget to adjust the setting or we simply don't know.


And don't even get me started about the viruses and scams on facebook. Click with care will ya.


And friends, there are ways to hide unwanted news and updates if they irritate you; you can even block and remove as you like. That includes myself.


Hmmm... how we wish we could easily do that in real life.


To stay safe offline is to be safe online.