It is surprising how many people think only their friends can see their Facebook page. The majority would probably say otherwise when asked directly, but their actions say otherwise. No, this isn't going to be another rant against Facebook, but a rant against the perception of anonymity on the internet.
Few individuals realize the amount of personal information available on the internet. Even fewer realize how sophisticated data mining has become. Even when companies try to anonymize their usage data, people figure out a way to de-anonymize it. Basically, when you get down to it, the data is usually too fine grained for there to be enough of us for someone not to figure out who that data was from.
So imagine what kind of damage a motivated person can do with information you openly assign your name to, but which you think is behind lock and key. Back in the day, I was a member of a Linux mailing list -- yes, I am a geek -- and I am amazed how many mirrors of messages I posted in 2003 about squirrelmail still come up when I search for my name on my search engine of choice -- yes, I am a geek. Now, I didn't think that mailing list was private -- in fact, I knew that there was a public archive which was freely searchable by the public -- but I guess I thought it was a bit more obscure. If Google has taught you anything, it should be that nothing is obscure on the internet now. Thankfully, I don't think I have said anything which I would truly regret, but I haven't combed through every message. Now imagine if every web search you had made was leaked.
