TMI on the Web

TMI: too much information. Слишком много личной информации в сети

Do You Really Want to Publish that Blog Post, Flickr that Picture, or Broadcast that Facebook Status?

The web is a powerful engine of personal expression, giving you a wide variety of online venues to speak your mind and communicate with friends or the public. But before you publish that blog post on MySpace or Blogger, post a picture to a picture-sharing sites like Flickr or Picasa, or broadcast your status on Facebook or using Twitter, think, "Is this really information that you want to expose on the web?" Even if you do now, think about years from now: will you want evidence of this youthful indiscretion or that personal opinion floating around on the web in the future? Remember, you don't have any expectation of privacy in information that you post to the public web, and information that you post now but delete later may still persist, whether on the pages of the friends you communicated with (like your Wall Posts to a friend on Facebook), or in Google's cache of old web pages, or the Internet Archive's library of public web pages.

One way of limiting the risks of posting information about yourself on the web is to use the privacy settings offered by social sharing sites like Flickr or Facebook, with which you can avoid publishing your information to the public web and can define which of your "friends" on the same service are allowed access to your information. However, these settings can sometimes be confusing and difficult to configure correctly, and it's unclear how robust such privacy protections would be against the attacks of a dedicated hacker. There's also the possibility that an adversary may try to "friend" you using fake information to pose as someone you know or would want to know. (A good rule of thumb is to only become "friends" with people that you know personally, after verifying with them via another means of communication — for example, by emailing them or calling them — to ensure that they are the ones that actually made the request.). Then there's the additional threat of adversaries gaining access to your account information by convincing you to use their "app." Finally, of course, there's always the risk that one of your "friends" will republish to others the information that you thought you had posted privately. So, even if you think you've strictly controlled access to your Facebook profile or Flickr page, you should recognize the significant risk that what you post there might leak out, and act accordingly.

Another option, if you're more interested in sharing information and opinion than in socializing, is to communicate anonymously, without tying your posts to your real identity. For an extended discussion of how to do that safely and effectively, take a look at our guide on "How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else)."

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