How Private are your Privacy Settings?

I have taken every possible precaution to make sure that every profile on every online community I have is as private as possible. My profile is blocked on MySpace. You cannot even search for me on Facebook if I haven’t already added you as a friend. I don’t even have anything written on my Second Life profile. However, I recently discovered that putting all of your privacy settings on “stay the hell out” doesn’t always work. Here is an article describing some of the problems this conundrum has created.

I won’t go into details, but I had placed something on my supposedly private Facebook profile that I did not want the entire world to see, just those people that I know. However, one of my supervisors at Notre Dame hacked on to my profile and found it. I was reprimanded by about 73 different people about 86 different times that day. My scholarship was even threatened.

I felt so betrayed by my good friend, Facebook. That day I even stripped half of my profile. All the pictures that were tagged of me, my interests, I was tempted to delete my entire wall as well. I am frightened to know that even if I place all those protections on my profile, people can still find me and people can still see things I don’t want them too. Does that make me naïve to think something as expansive as the internet is not private? Or is it wrong of those communities to lull me into a false sense of security?

Even administrators seem to be having a problem with online communities and their reputation. However, it does seem that employers are being pressured to stop this type of behavior.

(Just incase that last link does not work: http://www.onrec.com/newsstories/18848.asp)