Facebook, are you sharing too much on it?

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Are you sharing too much on Facebook?

This a question every Facebook user should be asking themselves.

I had to start using Facebook because the only emails in my inbox were from spammers or billers. The daily jokes or other emails from my friends had stopped. Facebook has become an integral part of our lives. Although it is a great tool for staying in touch with friends and family it has its own quirks, which, I realized after experimenting with the social network for a few months. The results of my experiment enabled me to start using Facebook intelligently.

Why should I not share too much on Facebook?

One thing you have to realize is that you are merely a “product’ to Facebook Inc. Why is that so? All the information you provide about yourself to Facebook is used by them for marketing purposes. Let’s examine the nuggets of information you provide to Facebook Inc.:

  • First and Last Name
  • Date of Birth
  • Gender
  • Marital Status
  • Relationship to another individual on Facebook
  • Home town and country
  • Current town and country
  • Schools attended
  • Current employment
  • Email Address
  • Mobile number
  • Your location(check in’s)
  • Your views on various things
  • Your favorite movies, books, songs, foods, etc.

We all have friends, but only a select few know all the above, and more about us.  Providing this info to Facebook and not controlling who see’s this info is like putting a bill board in your front yard with all this information on it.  How easy would it be for someone to impersonate you? I would think very!

Facebook uses this information for advertising purposes, how?  When a product or brand wants to target a specific group of people they can create an ad via Facebook tools, in which they target the ads using all or some of the attributes you have provided to Facebook when creating the profile.  This is why Facebook keeps on prompting for missing information from your profile, some of us give in and provide the requested information.

What should I do now?

If you are  not after shopping and deals, and just on Facebook to sync up with friends and family, do the following, otherwise go crazy and share your guts out.

  1. Never use your date of birth, make up one for use on internet and use it on all free sites.
  2. Don’t mark family as family, as your family and you already know who is who.
  3. You don’t have to like a page to see the updates, create a list and add the pages you like to that particular list.
  4. Do not allow friends to tag you on the photos