Okay, so in one area, Facebook, I'm a Luddite

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I do not, nor will I, put my life out on the internet.

I want absolutely nothing to do with Facebook in particular, because they are constantly invading the privacy of not just their users, but the people their users are in contact with.

I know two people who said things on facebook that cost them a job, because even though they had removed it, it was still archived on the internet.

I also know someone from our community who was outed because of the people they were connected with. maybe she could have set up better security, But she thought she had, but some of the people she regularly connected with within the community had not, and Facebook does not make it easy to hide.

Why am I saying this. it is because if anyone tries to contact me by my regular emails, I have set my email up to deep-six any email from any @facebook.com addresses.

So be warned, if you get a facebook not-email account, anything you send me will go into a black hole. I will not see it, and you will not know I never saw it.

There is nothing anyone can say to change my mind on this issue.

Holly

I've used small computers since 1975, and was using the internet before Al Gore invented it. I was a member of the Homebrew Computer Club, where a lot of the computer revolution began.

Comments

Full agreement,

ALISON

'any e-mails that arrive with Facebook on them are immediately deleted and then deleted again.There are so many people here in
Australia who have had major problems with this 'social stupidity' and who are now finding themselves bombarded with
unwanted spam.My brother arrived back from an overseas holiday recently and found his PC completely immobilised with rubbish
and it cost him $450 to get the matter sorted.Thank you for the warning.

ALISON

Pertinent chart of the day

That might be a hard resolution to keep, Holly.

Here's a pertinent (rare for me, maybe) chart on currant users. Facebook is f-ing huge; this isn't the email, but still, nearly twice gmail and hotmail combined! And these are unique users, not just people logging on to play Farmville nineteen time a day.

(Also interesting aside, at least to me, Yahoo is that big? Who? I only know weirdos I guess. No surprise there, but didn't think it went into this area.)

Anyhow, as a hardcore recluse I'm not going to be joining facebook, not even to spy on others. (I might go to Etropia, and make megabucks selling unreal real estate though; the guy that made millions on SecondLife probably had talent.)

Oh, and Zuckerberg says it ain't email anyway, but ugh then what is it?

I'm with you!

Facebook is for suckers who are willing to give away personal information for a 'free' service.

Ask yourself, would you be willing to give information you put on a social networking site which you have bristled at if the government was the one asking for the information?

Kim

I don't twitter

Angharad's picture

on Facebook or face on twitter book or whatever these people do nor do I buy on ebay - I suspect they're all only interested in exploiting me or my bank account and I have two cats and two children to do that.

Angharad

Angharad

Fake community

Rachel Greenham's picture

I had joined facebook for a while, but left again; not so much for fear of malware or data exposure, but rather just because I felt it was a thin, debased form of social interaction; a poor facsimile, a fake community; and that's even in relation to other online communities I've known, like this place, for instance. The level of interaction is so shallow, and deliberately so I think, but it consumes time, more time than it deserves, for the false feeling that you're 'in touch' with people. You're not, you're just banging on their walls, meant in the pink floyd sense of the word...

A year or so behind you

Most of my family is on FB, and have been pressuring me to get over there. We used to have a private family blog hosted on my brother's server, but everyone left it for FB because he's so "anal" about security. I can say that no one ever got spam as a result of participation on his blog, now, they all complain about it.

I also have no real desire to reconnect with old high school "chums". What they see as "the good old days" and "old fun times" I look back and am reminded that many of my activities at the time were a mask to hide my isolation.

At any rate, I will hold out forever if I can.

I bought my first computer in 1976, a Heathkit H8 (I still have it). I couldn't afford a terminal, so I spent the next 2 years punching machine language programs through the front panel in octal. When I finally built a terminal and loaded BASIC, I was so underwhelmed I immediately learned assembler. I was an ardent reader of Kilobaud, I still have a couple issues before they renamed it to Kilobaud Microcomputing, then finally, just Microcomputing. Back then, BYTE magazine weighed about a pound per issue and was mostly hardware articles.

Hugs
Carla Ann

Another late-adopter (or never-adopter)

We have yet to acquire a television!

I don't go quite as far back as you; only as far as programming in ALGOL assembler and inputting/outputting onto a small mainframe through a teleptype and punched paper tape. That was around the mid-sixties. My first box was a BBC model B, bought in the early eighties, thatwhich cost (in terms of the numbers on the tag) about the same amount as an entry-level laptop does today. (In real terms, a lot of money.)

I'm with you on your position. I consider your family very lucky to have had your brother's services; and rather stupid for letting that go. What happened to him? Is he getting the same pressure? Has found a way of running FB in a sandbox?

Lurker on FB

I utilize facebook to keep tabs on my birth family. I write what upsets them and have a better place to vent. I don't mind lurking to see how screwd up they are.
I used facebook to let all of the relatives know my sisters daughter was born out of wedlocke and fathered by our step dad. I saw lots of FB accounts close that day.
I am a nice person to those not connected to me by birth.

I've stirred the pot many times by using relatives FB to leave nasty notes to my siblings.

I'd prefer they all just went away, some natural disaster that would just swallow them up.

Imagine being told by your family (siblings and mother) that you are no longer considered a part of the family. I went into a deep depression for over a year and deprived myself of the things that make me happy. I cancelled my GRS due to depression.

I've been through a lot and utilized my therapist and am aat the point that I don't need them and I do well without them in my life.

Jill Micayla
Be kinder than necessary,Because everyone you meet
Is fighting some kind of battle.

Jill Micayla
Be kinder than necessary,Because everyone you meet
Is fighting some kind of battle.

Facebook Security = Oxymoron

Facebook are notorious for being utterly clueless about security. It is possible to (theoretically) restrict who can see what, but for those with ulterior motives, there are ways around it. One of the most popular being to create a popular Facebook Applicaton/Game - many demand to see far more information from your profile than they need; and many apps will then sell this information on to advertisers.

Although I am a user, I don't put anything sensitive or defamatory up there and generally only use it for FarmVille (yup, I got suckered into playing that game, and as I only have a limited number of friends also playing, it only takes about 10 minutes of time per day - fine by me!) and a 20-way chat with friends in another social circle (PM Blog), several of whom I have met 'in the flesh' (shocking, isn't it - a Facebooker who's actually met most of his 'friends' in real life!).

I also tweet - but as that service is based entirely around sharing up to 140 characters at a time, and everything other than direct messages can be found in the 'public timeline', you know from the outset that everything you're posting is accessible to world + dog.

 

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