10 Facebook Etiquette Rules For The Justifiably Paranoid
By David VanThournout
Thursday, Februrary 10th, 2011
1. Do not use your real name as your facebook identity.
If you search my name on facebook, a whole bunch of links come up, none of which are me. Beauty. I did the same thing in my high school yearbook. Much to my mothers dismay, I just refused to take pictures and in the end the only picture of me in the year books was this picture the school newspaper guy took of me selling a bag of something to one of my friends. No name. Bad picture. So when cops later asked me what highschool I went to, I could tell them and they’d have a fun time figuring it out. You can do the same for yourself with your facebook page. Make up a nickname, people know who you are. If they can’t figure it out, you really don’t want them to maybe. Lot’s of upside here, say what you want about your own company, not get chased down by your creditors who might try to friend your sister... these things are happening as we speak.
2. Don’t use a real picture of yourself.
Use a cryptic picture like the ones I do, my shadow pointing left, or a weird looking cloud. Eventually you’ll be able to scan a picture of someone you don’t know in a bar and then search on facebook not by name but by face recognition software. Scary database there.
3. Don’t add your current work information.
Again, this just makes it easy for them. Don’t do it. Quite simply, you could lose your job just being harassed on the phone at work.
4. Do not give out your education information
Yes the highschool information. Normally a wealth of data for the infohounds, id thievs and dataminers. This is just one more avenue unsavory types use to grab information in the public domain.
5. Don’t give your location out.
On a list of Sally Johnson’s, your would be stalker could easily Identify you simply because you’re the only Sally Johnson from Springfield, IL. Don’t make it that easy for them. The police can still know of course because they can get a warrant and follow your ip address. But the average creditor will be stumped.
6. Don’t actually give out your real birthday.
I always use April Fools day, but you can choose your favorite holiday, or whatever. Again, just don’t make it easy for them. There are two levels to this. you can select “don’t show my birthday” which will hide it from everyone except the police. Not entering it at all has the added effect of hiding it from facebook and therefore the police wouldn’t glean that information from facebook. They can still get it though depending upon which databases your name resides in.
7. Don’t attach your email address professional or otherwise to your facebook account.
Such as “yourfirstname.yourlastname@yourwork.com, a dead giveaway. If you want to send a message to someone do it internally within facebook. Don’t let those things cross over. It’s just good practice to keep some separation between things. You facebook is your avatar, you can flush it and start over anytime you want. You’ll have a much harder time flushing it if it is your real name, but if you have a facebook instance with your real information, it’s your virtual ass in the wind... whatever that means...
8. Phone number nix
Obviously this is a no brainer by now, it’s one of the last things on the list in “edit your profile” and clearly the most important information to leave out. If you want to be cagey and funny you could use:
(773) 404-2827
9. Address ditto
I would make something up, and be juvi about it, or you could just use this one:
1060 West Addison Street Chicago, IL 60613
10. Have yourself a virtual sexectomy.
I know, I know, not cool maybe but why not? As long as you’re not being the creepy one, which I am hoping you’re not... If your intentions are good, then I don’t see why either withholding that information is a bad thing.
Using facebook can be fun and in a good society could be just the thing to heal our industrial disconnect, reminding us of b-day’s, invites to events, things happening to your friends, etc. It’s totally possible to skirt the precipice of the persistence of digital memory. If one is careful and follows some best practices like those that I’ve outlined above, you can avoid being stalked by your creditors, identity thieves, your boss...
It is important to protect the privacy of the individual from the state because what this really amounts to in many cases is that they’ve done an end run around privacy. Facebook has for all intents and purposes become the digital commons. And because they can argue (perhaps validly) that it is intentionally put into the public space, and therefore this information isn’t subject to the antiquated protections currently in place against unreasonable search and seizure. We do need to better define this and standardize social media policies in order to protect us from having our privacy violated and the unintended consequences of that. Recent events in Egypt pretty much show the power of social media and what the sudden removal of that media can precipitate. If you’d like to familiarize yourself with this issue, there are a few links at the bottom of the page to get you started.
Enjoy!
EFF Social Media Law Enforcement Guide
How Long Before Facebook Hands Over Your Personal Information to the Government?
