The Age of Privacy is over??? I hope Mr Z is wrong

In a recent  interview with TechCrunch's Michael Arrington (9 Jan 2010), facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg declared the world has changed- that the age of privacy is over.

Okay... when facebook first launched, I had an account. Then I shut it down. I thought to myself, why would I want to put my personal life on the web? Fast-forward a few years and EVERYONE I know not only share their personal lives, but things about me and those I care about on their facebook pages. I restarted my account... if for no other reason than to attempt to keep an eye on what was posted and at least try and protect those I care about from doing something too dangerous from an information security perspective.

But your efforts to protect your privacy won't amount to much if the founder of the site sees the information protected by your privacy settings as lost revenue...

Perhaps, Mr Zuckerberg needs to take a close look at the results of this survey: Cyber Crime Survey: Trust Shaken


Globally, criminals are reviving our concern for our personal information using a powerful motivator- economics (read as: we fear of losing our hard-earned cash)... and unfortunately, Mr Z is missing an opportunity to distinguish himself as a privacy leader. 

Why would people continue to use facebook? For now, the perceived benefits of sharing our lives with those we interact with (our tribe) outweigh the risk. However, other tribes want to use our information for another purpose... to scavenge it for tasty morsels of personal information to use to clean out our bank accounts and otherwise disrupt our lives.

Mr Zuckerber's view on the privacy of his customer's data favors the latter group.

I think it may be time to once again, close my facebook account (as though my data is REALLY gone).


Sorry, mom. You'll just have to switch back to email.


Listen to Mr Zuckerberg's comments here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/3848950