You are asking the right questions. My fear is that 99.9% of the public are not asking these questions at all. They are taking whatever they are given and not thinking about it. And there is a LOT to think about!

I write about some of these issues in my blog as well:

http://thetaptaptap.wordpress.com/2010/01/22/pardon-me%E2%80%A6your-wall-is-showing/

Thanks for your post!

- John

Absolutely. Just because everybody can be connected doesn’t mean that we want to be. I keep my facebook fairly private. There’s a limit to how much of myself I want out there.

- Greg

http://www.cmamanitoba.com/

Mark

That is a scary story. And that is what worries me. We can never take a “that won’t happen to me” attitude.

I agree I think we need to be careful about what we share about our personal and private lives, but be open with our professional lives, in that we share views, help others, make contacts and do business.

That is interesting. I never worried too much about Linkedin because it was more business orientated and more limited in the information available. I know you can hide your contacts. In your case more privacy is a real concern and I certainly believe privacy should be a higher priority on their list.

I’ve had the same concerns as you for a while now, when I first started using social networks I’m ashamed to admit that privacy didn’t even occur to me! I was so swept up in the whole idea the seriousness was lost under all the enthusiasm. I have since learnt the hard way though, having kept a fairly open profile I was, unbeknown to me, allowing someone I knew to ‘cyber-stalk’ me, it was only when I started receiving abusive messages mentioning my where-abouts that I started to really take stock. Following on from a court injunction and many months of worry, I now make sure my profile is completely private and am very selective about who I add or accept as friends, and deny all applications.

Whilst I agree that this has restricted my use of the network, I also don’t feel like I’ve lost anything by doing it, I consider my facebook account to be an additional means to stay in touch with my friends and share experiences with the people I know. I don’t use it for business networking purposes.

I do however use LinkedIn for networking, in fact I would say I spend more time on LinkedIn than I do facebook. I recently started receiving notifications through Linkedin that the same chap I mentioned earlier was now using this network — I’m assuming I was notified because his email address was in my address book. Instantly the panic started to rise, him having access to my business contacts was the last thing I wanted! I’d never even looked into the privacy settings of LinkedIn before but when I finally did I discovered… there are none! Or very, very few, I couldn’t for example, block this guy from seeing my profile. I contacted LinkedIn to see if blocking him would be possible and the answer was no, but that they could review his account, the guy hasn’t done anything – yet, though so he hasn’t violated any policies. Now I’m faced with the choice do I abandon my profile that has helped me professionally a huge amount, or do I run the risk and hope for the best?

So, in answer to your question I think it’s very unwise to reveal the ‘whole’ you on a social network, they each serve different purposes – Facebook is more for friends, so make it private and be selective who you allow in, and LinkedIn is for business, stick to content you wouldn’t mind your clients seeing and all should be ok.