Left Facebook and “Why you should too”

1 minute read

The amount of banter on the topic is extensive, but there really are good reasons to leave Facebook. When I started dabbling in Social Networking back on the BBS days there was always a desire and reason for anonymity. It could have been for the illegal activities going on or for the fact people just didn’t want to over expose themselves. It was around the time AOL picked up some steam that sharing really became trendy. There were extensive pushes to kick AOL off the grid for the amount of anonymous data leaked from their pipes, but that was not enough to place controls on the system. As I joined sites like Friendster, Jaiku, etc. there were always controls in place for the amount of information I could share and what people could share about me. That layer of control allowed me to keep tabs on my personal identity and persona. I left MySpace and Hi5 since everyone told me “Facebook is way more secure,” but at the time I was unable to join due to no college affiliation. That changed and I joined…

My biggest gripe about Facebook isn’t that Big Brother will learn everything about me. I am a Defense Contractor and prior military, Big Brother knows more about me than I know. My gripe is that Facebook has no legal mandate to control my data. If I post that my dogs name is Tim, I was born on Mars, and my mom used to be Misses Fraglerock – you have in essence enough information to reset passwords on most major websites. I would share that information under the guise that Google would not crawl the info or some outside source. The issue with Facebook is even if I set the control to ONLY allow for you, my bestest friend to see it, as soon as you visit a website or take a stupid quiz my information is accessible to other folks. My circle of trust (COT) is now broken.

As a security professional we must place our money where our mouths are. If we are going to preach two factor authentication and default-deny, then we must live it. Facebook violates a default-deny policy by constantly changing TOS and releasing my information. They refuse to validate and control my data from myself and friends despite any setting I select…as such…auf weidersahn

Nicholas Schmidt