Friday’s Food for Thought: The Perils of Being Social

With hundreds of miles open to habitation, people still tend to build their houses close to the houses of other people. No matter the continent, no matter the culture, no matter the era, this is what we do. And to find an individual choosing to live completely alone in the world is so rare as to confirm that human beings need to live amongst each other; indeed we are compelled from within ourselves to group together. Humans are social animals; it is our nature to be so.

We stole that paragraph from the site “Simply Complicated: Understanding The Human Being.” What strikes us about that paragraph is that it reinforces our social nature and how the advent of online social networks has further reinforced this concept. But, as we have learned recently with all the news about the privacy issues surrounding sites like Facebook, there are perils to being social.

Our recent post about social networks being highly dangerous highlights the 2010 Javelin Strategy & Research Identity Fraud Survey Report, co-sponsored by ITAC that warned that social networking sites are quickly becoming a potential source of information for identity thieves. And Consumer Reports found that 52 percent of social-network users post their full birth date, home addresses, vacation plans or other personal information that could increase their risk of becoming victims of identity theft or other computer crimes.

On top of that, did you all see Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s comment — using an expletive mind you — about trusting users on Facebook. Of course, this comment was made back in 2004, but scarily shows that Facebook is not on our side when it comes to privacy.