The technology behind Facebook and the Kindle is a bit like the Hotel California. You can check out, but you can never leave. The sites hold on to your information, long after you've deactivated your account.
Check out for example the report that Amazon might be looking over the shoulders of Kindle readers and providing the information it gleans to third parties. We know how e-book readers offer the electronic equivalent of underlining relevant passages, allowing an electronic form of note-taking. Trouble is Amazon is now creating a record of those highlights and sending them back to its servers, where they will be compiled and sorted to help produce a new feature called "Popular Highlights." Now, the individual reader will not be indentified, but it's definitely creepy.
And then of course, we have the growing controversy over Facebook and privacy. The reality is Facebook does not make it easy for people to protect their privacy, and it's deliberate.
The New York Times reports that Facebook's privacy policy is longer than the US constitution. If people want to keep their information private, they'll need to spend a lot of time clicking. There are more than 50 privacy buttons, which then require choosing among a total of more than 170 options. Do you want to see only friends? What about friends of friends? Or a customized list of people? Start selecting from the pull down options and then remove the ticks from the boxes that say information will be shared across the Web. How many people are tech savvy enough to do that? Or for that matter, how many have the time?
True, you can always deactivate your account. But even that's complicated because Facebook still retains your information.
So if you decide to scrap the Kindle and go back to paper books, if you decide to leave Facebook, just remember that they will keep that information. The bottom line is that these companies make money by getting people to share information, it's as simple as that. In the end, the onus falls on the users. In the meantime, just remember the Hotel California.
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