The Almagest

Issue date: 3/11/10 Section: OP/ED

Media Credit: gamefire.com

There are many social networking sites online to chat, share photos, blog and even find love.

Today the most popular networking site seems to be Facebook with more than 400 million users logging on. Originally created for college students, Facebook now welcomes anyone with an e-mail address. For students, this means companies and future employers are able to log on and check students' status.

I didn't believe it when my advisor told me that our Facebook pages should be deleted; I surely didn't want to be out of the loop with my friends. I then Googled my name, and the first link to show up was my Facebook page. It took one simple search for me to realize that I do not want just anyone to be able to find me.

I thought I had my privacy settings under control, but obviously I was wrong. In light of this, I chose to change my profile picture as the one of me at the bar was definitely not a first impression I want to make.

Recently, Facebook has added new privacy settings, but that doesn't mean they are any better than the previous settings. Facebook actually wants you to share more information, giving the site more leeway to share your information with many search engines such as Google or Yahoo. You have to dig deep on the website to get your information cleared, but even then, the change won't be permanent. According to the Facebook's Terms & Conditions, "Certain categories of information such as your name, profile photo, list of friends and pages you are a fan of, gender, geographic region and networks you belong to are considered publicly available, and therefore do not have privacy settings."

Even after you remove information from your profile or even erase your account, Facebook reserves the right to register and keep all of your private information.

Agreeing to Facebook Privacy Policy means that you waive all your rights, and, in addition, they can use all your photos freely. The most prominent feature of Facebook pictures is "My Photos," a feature which allows users to upload photos and "tag" them with the names of the people in the pictures. This function resulted in trouble for one University of Missouri-Columbia student, after college administrators found a picture of her duct-taped to a chair while another student poured beer into her mouth. The student in question had just been elected Student Council vice president, and the University considered removing her from that position.

This is just one piece of information that was published after two MIT students hacked into over 70,000 Facebook profiles during a study on data mining.

Jobs are hard to find, so if you do choose to post your information online through a social networking site, make sure it's professional. More employers are recruiting on social networks than ever, so it's important for students to be aware of what is voluntarily posted online.

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