What is Too Much Information on Facebook?

According to an article that I read, 30 billion discrete pieces of information are shared on Facebook each month. That's a lot of information. When does all that become TMI (too much information)?

You can find a lot of my basic personal information on Facebook, such as my employer, my educational background, my hometown and my latest status updates. I know that advertisers can use this to send me targeted marketing, but that doesn't bother me. Advertising is just information. You can tune it out if you want to. I also don't worry about revealing too much personal information on Facebook because so much of my personal information is already available online.

If you go to the following websites:
www.anywho.com
www.stsr.org
www.texasbar.com
www.google.com/earth

you can find my home address and phone number, my cell phone number, my photo, my state bar number, where I went to law school and even a photo of my home. You just have to know where to look. Could someone take this information and try to steal my identity? Possibly, but it would be difficult without my social security number and mother's maiden name, which are not available online.

I guard against identity theft by monitoring my bank account and credit card statements on a regular basis. The only time I have ever had my credit compromised was through conventional means; a clerk at Jack in the Box kept my card after making a purchase. Discover's fraud prevention department flagged the suspicious transactions within about a day. The only thing that I lost was the time it took to file a police report.

However, I am careful not to post anything that would come back to haunt me. There have been stories of people losing their job or even being arrested based on their Facebook posts. I don't post anything unflattering about my employer on Facebook or anywhere else (although as firm webmaster I strive to add as much positive content as I can on the firm's website). Were I to do something really stupid, I would not brag about it on Facebook.

As a general rule, I try not to post anything on Facebook that I would be embarassed for my mother to see. If you go through my photos, you may find one picture of me drinking, but it was just a glass of wine at a high school reunion. I don't use profanity. The most revealing information I post is on my blog, which feeds into Facebook. This increases my readership from about 10 to as many as 20 or 30. While I reveal a lot of my opinions, I try to write in a careful, reasoned way that is consistent with what I want my public persona to be. Sometimes I will venture out a bit and write something satirical or just plain silly (for example, yesterday I posted the German translation of "I have sauerkraut in my lederhosen," which is a line from the movie Top Secret). I use Facebook to communicate what I want to be known about me to my Facebook friends and the world at large. However, I always keep in mind that anyone could be reading what I post.

Those Gloomy Swedes

My father's father's father's father came to this country from Sweden. I don't know a lot about our country of origin, except that they were neutral in World War II, that a lot of Swedish-Americans are Lutheran and Swedes make Saabs. However, I have been making up for that by soaking up some Swedish culture through fiction. This past weekend, I saw "Let Me In," which is a remake of the Swedish vampire movie "Let the Right One In" (which I also saw). I am also reading "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Stieg Larsson. They paint a dark picture.

With "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," even the real life connection is depressing. The author turned in the manuscripts for three books in the series and then dropped dead.

One of the interesting thing about watching "Let Me In" and "Let the Right One In" was how easily the scene could be shifted from Sweden to Los Alamos, New Mexico. In many cases, the American re-make copied the Swedish original shot for shot. The middle school bullies who torture the film's protagonist translate across cultures without any need for adaptation.

However, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" poses a starker contrast. In Sweden (or at least fictional Sweden), a journalist who publishes a story which cannot be verified can be sent to jail on libel charges. An antisocial girl who refuses to conform can be labelled as mentally challenged and have her assets placed under the control of a guardian even though she is a brilliant adult. In the socialist paradise of Sweden, corporate titans play dirty tricks on each other, families are dysfunctional and women are abused with great regularity. Also, it's cold.

Both stories make for compelling fiction. If that was all I knew about Sweden, I would conclude that it is a really dreary place. However, it's just fiction. Can anyone recommend any stories about happy Swedes?

Is Facebook Big Brother?

I came across an article entitled "Facebook Big Biz: Users Beware." The article’s premise was that Facebook’s business model depends on selling your personal information. You can find the article here.

A few excerpts:

If you follow the money you will quickly determine that Facebook is not some kindly charity helping us reconnect with old friends. Facebook is all about making money.

At its heart, Facebook is actually a data mining company. And once they have data, they turn around and sell it.

Facebook is no different except that the amount and type of information that people share is much more personal and detailed. We think nothing about telling people here we are traveling to and how long we will be gone. We tell about romances, post pictures of children and share some of our most intimate thoughts.

Just remember, when you do this Facebook will sell your information. It will be sorted, categorized and sold to a variety of people. Some of them just want to sell you something. Others may not be nearly as up front or honorable in their intentions.

Given the vague and alarmist tone of the article, I decided to dig deeper. First I asked the author (who happens to be my brother) what the basis was for his contention that Facebook is basically a data mining company. His reply was similar to what the article said: follow the money. He pointed out that Facebook has a market capitalization of $20 billion even though it is not publicly traded. His conclusion was that a lot of money must be changing hands to support that kind of capitalization. Fair enough, but is data mining the only explanation for a lot of money changing hands?

Next, I went to Facebook to see what it says about how your personal information can be used. When it comes to companies, I believe that they will be as honest as they have to be. If a company like Facebook says one thing on their privacy policy and does another, they are inviting a class action lawsuit and there are plenty of hungry lawyers waiting to take them down. Here is what Facebook says about how they use your personal information:

We never share your personal information with our advertisers. Facebook's ad targeting is done entirely anonymously. If advertisers select demographic targeting for their ads, Facebook automatically matches those ads to the appropriate audience. Advertisers only receive anonymous data reports.

Some select partner sites may access your information to personalize your experience as soon as you arrive, but only information that's already visible to everyone. You can turn off instant personalization for specific sites or you can turn it off completely from the Applications and Websites page. This will prevent these partners from receiving your information through instant personalization, including what's visible to everyone.

5. How We Use Your Information

We use the information we collect to try to provide a safe, efficient, and customized experience. Here are some of the details on how we do that:

To manage the service. We use the information we collect to provide our services and features to you, to measure and improve those services and features, and to provide you with customer support. We use the information to prevent potentially illegal activities, and to enforce our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. We also use a variety of technological systems to detect and address anomalous activity and screen content to prevent abuse such as spam. These efforts may on occasion result in a temporary or permanent suspension or termination of some functions for some users.

To contact you. We may contact you with service-related announcements from time to time. You may opt out of all communications except essential updates on your account notifications page. We may include content you see on Facebook in the emails we send to you.

To serve personalized advertising to you. We don’t share your information with advertisers without your consent. (An example of consent would be if you asked us to provide your shipping address to an advertiser to receive a free sample.) We allow advertisers to choose the characteristics of users who will see their advertisements and we may use any of the non-personally identifiable attributes we have collected (including information you may have decided not to show to other users, such as your birth year or other sensitive personal information or preferences) to select the appropriate audience for those advertisements. For example, we might use your interest in soccer to show you ads for soccer equipment, but we do not tell the soccer equipment company who you are. You can see the criteria advertisers may select by visiting our advertising page. Even though we do not share your information with advertisers without your consent, when you click on or otherwise interact with an advertisement there is a possibility that the advertiser may place a cookie in your browser and note that it meets the criteria they selected.

To serve social ads. We occasionally pair advertisements we serve with relevant information we have about you and your friends to make advertisements more interesting and more tailored to you and your friends. For example, if you connect with your favorite band’s page, we may display your name and profile photo next to an advertisement for that page that is displayed to your friends. We only share the personally identifiable information visible in the social ad with the friend who can see the ad. You can opt out of having your information used in social ads on this help page.

To supplement your profile. We may use information about you that we collect from other Facebook users to supplement your profile (such as when you are tagged in a photo or mentioned in a status update). In such cases we generally give you the ability to remove the content (such as allowing you to remove a photo tag of you) or limit its visibility on your profile.

To make suggestions. We use your profile information, the addresses you import through our contact importers, and other relevant information, to help you connect with your friends, including making suggestions to you and other users that you connect with on Facebook. For example, if another user imports the same email address as you do, we may suggest that you connect with each other. If you want to limit your visibility in suggestions we make to other people, you can adjust your search visibility privacy setting, as you will only be visible in our suggestions to the extent you choose to be visible in public search listings. You may also block specific individual users from being suggested to you and you from being suggested to them.

To help your friends find you. We allow other users to use contact information they have about you, such as your email address, to find you, including through contact importers and search. You can prevent other users from using your email address to find you using the search section of your privacy settings.

Downloadable Software. Certain downloadable software applications and applets that we offer, such as our browser toolbars and photo uploaders, transmit data to us. We may not make a formal disclosure if we believe our collection of and use of the information is the obvious purpose of the application, such as the fact that we receive photos when you use our photo uploader. If we believe it is not obvious that we are collecting or using such information, we will make a disclosure to you the first time you provide the information to us so that you can decide whether you want to use that feature.

Memorializing Accounts. If we are notified that a user is deceased, we may memorialize the user’s account. In such cases we restrict profile access to confirmed friends, and allow friends and family to write on the user’s Wall in remembrance. We may close an account if we receive a formal request from the user’s next of kin or other proper legal request to do so.

I realize that this is a lot to digest. The volume of the privacy policy cuts both ways. On the one hand, Facebook has gone out of their way to tell you the limits on how they will use your information. On the other hand, the length of policy shows that they have spent a lot of time thinking about how to use your information.

Here is my take away from all this. Facebook acts as a buffer between its users and its advertisers. It collects data on its members and sells the general characteristics of the data to its advertisers without disclosing the specific aspects of its members. In the example given, if an advertiser wanted to direct an ad to soccer enthusiasts, Facebook could route that ad to people who have identified soccer as an interest, but the advertiser would not know who the soccer enthusiasts were.

There are two ways that outsiders can get the personal information. One is technology failure. If an unethical employee copies personal information and sells it or if a hacker exploits a hole in the security, a third party could take advantage of the mountains of private information within Facebook. The second way is if an advertiser or an app requests permission to access the user's profile and the user clicks yes without thinking of the implications. So, you can have your information stolen or you can voluntarily disclose your information. How is that any different than in the real world? A private detective sifting through your trash can obtain a lot of personal information. That is similar to the data breach scenario. Also, people give out lots of personal information about themselves offline, especially if alcohol is involved.

I think that the bottom line is that the privacy issues are essentially the same whether in Facebook or the real world. If you would not deposit documents with your bank account number and social security number in the garbage, you should not post similar information online. Just as you would not tell a new friend that you met at the bar that you were embezzling from your employer, you should not post that information on Facebook. If you do, you deserve what you get.

While Facebook allows you to post vast amounts of information, it allows you to control how much of that information is available to the public. The following information is available to anyone:

Your Name
Profile Picture
Networks

However, the seriously private can avoid these limitations by registering under a pseudonym, using a profile picture that is not personal to them and not signing up for any networks. For example, I am friends with Bishop Barbie. Bishop Barbie is not a real person. She is a satire on the Evangelical Lutheran Church and her profile picture is a Barbie doll dressed in bishop’s robes. This particular user hides behind complete privacy because he/she does not use his/her own name or photo.

Anything else on Facebook is subject to privacy settings, which can be set to: everyone, friends of friends and friends. For me, I allow everyone to see my status, posts, bios and favorite quotations. I don’t post anything to these areas that I don’t want the world to see. Everything else is set to friends only.

Photos are a touchy area. If photos are of family members only, I restrict those albums to designated family members. If someone requests that I not tag their photos with their identity, I respect this. However, if I were to tag someone’s photo in spite of their request, Facebook gives them the right to delete the tag.

Based on all this, I don’t buy the argument that Facebook is an insidious data mining operation selling your personal information to people who want to invade your privacy. I think there are other answers for its value. When you create a platform with as many users as Facebook has, there is tremendous value there. I think that a lot of Facebook’s theoretical market capitalization is based on its potential rather than its current operations. Facebook is expanding the sale of credits which can be used to play games on its site with the hope of creating its own mini-banking system much like Paypal. Facebook has been very succesful in attracting large numbers of users. Where there are a large number of eyes on the screen, there is the potential for making money.

I want to return to the article’s conclusion:

So the next time you think about posting something on Facebook, remember that you are being watched by the world.

I think this is a valid point and my next post will be when you cross the line of TMI (too much information).

Peace, Love and Palestinian Beer

This post was going to be titled "Is Everyone Insane?" However, I came across a story of hope in the Middle East which makes me believe that all is not lost.

First the insanity. I have written about why the people who want to block the Manhattan mosque are not good Americans. I did not write about the idiot in Florida who wanted to burn the Quran, mostly because I thought he was getting way too much attention as it was.

However, just when you want to get on your high horse and accuse Americans of being hypocrites who hate the First Amendment and anyone who does not look exactly like them, you come across a story (or in this case, a whole bunch of them), which makes you appreciate that a group of peacefully demonstrating hypocrites is much better than really angry fanatics.

For me, the proposed Quran burning was a non-story. An insignificant pastor got a lot of press by threatening to burn the Quran, but backed down after God, President Obama and a bunch of generals told him not to.

However, the reaction in the Muslim world was much less begnign. Despite the fact that the Quran burning never occurred, we have the following stories from Afghanistan, Pakistan and India:

--In Afghanistan, crowds shouted "Death to America" and injured eleven
--In India, two Christian schools and a Christian church were burned and two other Christian schools were attacked
--In Pakistan, a grenade exploded in a Lutheran church.

If this is how radical Islamists react to a proposed desecration of their holy book, image what the reaction would be to a real provocation?

However, the news is not all bad. In a Christian town within the Palestinian West Bank under Israeli occupation, Christians, Jews and Muslims came together to celebrate Oktoberfest and drink Palestinian beer. You can read about it here. The following quote really sums it up for me:

"Normally I go to demonstrations. It's nice to drink beer instead," said Ms. Natasha Dudinski, a 43-year-old Israeli from Jerusalem who, as a pro-Palestinian peace activist has attended weekly protests for years.

The basic tenor of the story is that enough security has returned to the area to where the different groups can gather in peace. The local Palestinian authorities were sensitive enough to their own constituencies to highlight the event as a celebration of Palestinian crafts and honey with a few thousand gallons of beer thrown in for good measure.

It is nice to see that somewhere in the world, actually in one of the most unstable areas in the world, people came together and acted sensibly. If it would help world peace, I would give up my own abstention from beer (based entirely on its carb content) and down a Palestinian Taybeh.

Is It Sinful to Laugh at Your Denomination?

I have recently discovered Garrison Keillor's Prarie Home Companion. His tales of life among the Lutherans give me a smile. I didn't grow up in a predominantly Lutheran community, so that his tales of small-town Minnesota life are just familiar enough to provoke nostalgia. Keillor's cultural Lutheranism is far more begnign than the schisms which are rocking the Evangelical Lutheran Church at this time. The controversy has roused Lutherans to do those things which are within our nature: we have formed committees, issued statements of principle and written thoughtfully worded open letters. Since this is the 21st Century, we have even put up websites where you can read the statements of principle and thoughtfully worded open letters.

However, recently I have come across a guilty pleasure which is a bit more hard-edged. Bishop Barbie is a smartly written blog(www.bishopbarbie00.blogspot.com) which parodies the goings on at Higgins Road in Chicago (home to the national church office). Bishop Barbie is the Stephen Colbert of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, which is to say, she plays the character of a faux liberal to mock the sillier strains within the church. And you have to admit that sometimes the church gives her some pretty good material. The very first post that I read, which you can find here featured Bishop Mark Hanson giving a long-winded explanation of why Lutherans distinguish themselves from other denominations by not distinguishing themselves from other denominations.

Some of her postings get a bit pretentious as she gets carried away by her character, but others are wickedly funny. Am I going to go to Hell for laughing at my denomination? Good thing the ELCA doesn't believe in Hell.

Trying to Explain Soccer

I have a running debate with a colleague about whether I spend too much time away from the office on soccer. Twice a week I have to leave at the ridiculously early hour of 5:30pm for practice and I am not able to work Saturdays like a good lawyer should. In the course of a week, I am likely to get bit by mosquitos, get my face sunburned and get my legs scratched crawling through the brush looking for errant soccer balls. My colleague has intimated (although he/she has not come right out and said it), that soccer is a sport for rich suburban kids and that I should find a real cause to support, preferably one that involves attending luncheons to raise money for programs for inner city kids.

I will admit that soccer is not on a par with feeding the hungry. However, here are a few reasons why I would justify the time (aside from the more obvious reason that I just feel like it).

1. Childhood obesity is an epidemic in this country. If you look at the girls on my team, many of them have gazelle-like builds without an ounce of fat. Is this because of discipline and hard work or is it just high metabolism? I don't know. Then there are the girls who have more solid, muscular builds. Playing soccer vs. playing video games is the difference between being fit and strong or being flabby.

2. I once had a mom tell me that she was glad her daughter was playing soccer because she knew that for that hour and a half, she was not getting into trouble. The suburbs are not the innocent place they might appear to be from the outside. I did a voir dire demonstration at the high school where most of the girls on my team attend. It was a case about a teen busted for drug possession so I asked the question whether anyone had a friend or family member who had been arrested for drugs. Nearly every hand in the room went up.

3. Soccer is the world's sport and soccer exposes kids to people from different backgrounds. On my team, I have girls who were either born in or have a parent who was born in Scotland, France, Spain and the Phillipines. During check-in each week, I have to help the referees pronounce names like Maeve and Shonagh. On a soccer team, you have girls from many different backgrounds who must learn to work together for a common goal.

4. Soccer teaches assertiveness. Soccer is a contact sport played with minimal padding. You will not get the ball by being ladylike and demure. I pity the guy who messes with one of the girls on my team. If he is lucky, a dislocated shoulder is the least he will walk away with.

5. Soccer teaches leadership. Soccer, unlike football, is a player driven sport. Once you move to the full-sized field (which happens at age 12), there is a limit to how much instruction the coach can give from the sideline for the simple reason that a player on the far side of the field can't hear you. A successful team is one where the girls communicate with each other. It is also one where there are girls willing to take a leadership role. I will be the first to admit that there are girls on the team who know much more about how to play soccer than I do. It is a beautiful thing when they are willing to step up and be the teachers instead of just participants.

6. Finally, it is a chance to spend time with my daughter. In four years, she will be leaving for college and my role as a dad will be much less. I am glad to have the quality time while I can.

As a parent of daughters, I want to see my girls (and the extended family of the girls on the team) grow up to be healthy, responsible and productive adults. I see soccer as more than a sport for spoiled suburban kids. It teaches important life lessons. I am willing to participate in my own fumbling way because I hope that it will do some good for the girls who participate. It also gets me away from the computer in the office and into the outdoors, which is probably a good thing for me as well.