Imagine if you were asked to enter all of your personal details onto a website, including name, date of birth, country and city of residence, place of employment, hobbies, personal interests, spouses, partners and children, political and religious affiliations, professional associations, special interests. To that, you can add events that you are attending from day to day, travel itineraries, and photos of your social and professional life.
Of course, there are plenty of security settings available, so that you can customise the level of access through which other people can access your personal details. Naturally, you would want to ensure that you had full control over the level of privacy for your online presence. And you would want to take measures to make sure that you understood exactly what personal details people can and can't access. That only makes sense, especially with the occurrence of identity theft happening these days.
And before I go further - yes, I'm talking about Facebook.
Of course, the other way of controlling the amount of details that you make available online is to simply limit the amount of personal information that you put onto Facebook. However, social networking is more effective when you have a more complete online profile. So, what you ideally want is to put a lot of your personal details online, and then customise your security settings.
Now, how do you know how secure your details are? There's one simple way - firstly log out of facebook, then do a search on yourself. Next - find somebody who you're not yet "facebook friends" with, and then see how much information they can find on you. Then, find a "facebook friend" and do the same. There are other levels of association, like network members, but you get the idea. If all else fails, create dummy facebook accounts, and test the security of your personal details.
Okay, this all sounds a little convoluted and far-fetched, but my point is this - how aware are you of your online presence? It's naturally understandable to be wary of who you give your personal details to, and you have two choices - withhold the information, or make sure you understand how security settings work on social networking sites. Nowadays, Facebook is an extremely highly-trusted brand, with hundreds of millions of users, but the onus is still on the user to set their level of online security.
Furthermore, this should be an integral part of information literacy training when it comes to social networking. Just as it's important to show students and members of the community how to interact socially and build networks online, it's equally as important to highlight the "stranger danger" principles, and maintain awareness of what information you are providing to whom. It needs to be drummed into everybody, young and old, that whilst creating online content is instantaneous and easy, you need to be smart about the way you do it. A little while ago, Danah Boyd spoke on the importance of being present in kids' lives online, and the scopes for teachers and librarians to provide guidance to students through online social media, in the same way that they would in a classroom or a schoolyard. I really like this idea, and if a student is having issues maintaining privacy or decorum in their online presence, then it would be prudent for a teacher or librarian to be able to interact with them and guide them on how to adjust their privacy settings (even if it means getting themselves filtered out!!).
Anyway, let's say that things have gotten a little out of hand. You've gone a little bit Web 2.0 crazy, and put yourself out there a little too much. Now you're paranoid about your girlfriend/wife seeing photos of you out at the pub last week when you said that you were working late, or worried that your boss will find out about your tweets where you constantly slag off your co-workers. Let's also assume that you haven't really given much thought to the level of security that you've set, and don't really understand it.
Or, even worse, you don't possess enough self-control to limit the amount of time you spend online with social networking sites.
Enter the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine. Basically, here's how it works. You hand over your login details to the organisation. They change your password so that you can't change your mind. And then, apparently, you watch as the program deletes your details.
Now, what was that I was saying before about being careful about who you give your details to?
And yet, here is an organisation that asks you to effectively hand it over to them. What do you know about them? Can you trust them with unlimited access to a complete profile of your personal details, and then allow them to change your password so that you can't access it anymore.
Which brings me to my point, and I will use bold capitals:
IF YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO DELETE YOUR FACEBOOK ACCOUNT, THEN YOU SHOULD FIND OUT. IT'S ACTUALLY VERY SIMPLE.
I don't mean to sound patronising - as a librarian, I'm aware that there can be limitations in people's experience with technology, and sometimes it takes a while to learn.
But IMHO, using software like the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine is about as stupid as giving your bank details to Nigerians. It's a cute concept, with a nice flashy video, but it's misleading and, frankly, encourages people to turn their back on social software, rather than learn to use it effectively and sensibly. It's a bit like telling people to throw away their mobile phone, because you spend too much time having trivial phone calls, rather than learning to exercise self-control.
Furthermore, there's the information literacy issue of being able to evaluate online media, and learn to distinguish between authoritative and trusted sources, and unreliable ones. Just as a student should learn to be able to identify news sources, opinion sources, government sources, educational sources, commercial sources - so too should they learn to know when NOT TO GIVE PERSONAL DETAILS TO COMPLETE STRANGERS.
Unsurprisingly, reports have now come in that Facebook has been blocking access to the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine. Now, of course, it's in their interests to suppress media that encourages people to turn away from facebook, but they also make a very legitimate point - you should not be allowing another person - especially not a complete stranger - to access all your personal details, and go through each section one-by-one. Even if it is for the purpose of deleting them, they are, at the same time, accessing ALL of your personal details.
I think I've made my point.
Finally, if you really want to commit Facebook Suicide (as opposed to simply deactivating your account) then it's very easy. I've done it myself. Just use this link and hit submit. Of course, there's a cooling off period. If you don't trust yourself to not change your mind, find a trusted friend to assist in your suicide. Get them to change your password, and then go to the above link. It's safer, and probably a lot quicker.
It's interesting - the question has recently been posed: "Information literacy and web 2.0: a paradox?" as one of the conference streams in the upcoming ALIA Access 2010 event. In an online environment where one's presence is becoming increasingly customisable, information literacy is arguably more vital than ever, in ensuring that people know exactly what they're doing when they create online content with personal information.
