Once more unto the breach (of trust), dear friends....

Alexander Van Elsas writes about Facebook's latest sca...er service to gather your data - sorry, enhance your experience. Facebook are putting a search box in the system so, in their words:

By integrating web search into Facebook, you can increase the information available to share with your friends, family and coworkers on the site. For example, your friend may invite you to an event at a new restaurant. Without leaving Facebook, you can check out the details of the restaurant on the web. Or, say you see photos in your News Feed about a friend's recent trip to Dubai. Inspired, you can search the web for more information about travel without having to leave Facebook.

Did you get the "without leaving Facebook" bit? And hands up all of you who want your friends to know what you search for. Whether this will work is moot, I prefer to search off the browser toolbar and open another window, but some may be drawn to do everything in Facebook. But lets be clear, this is an attempt to get more of your data for facemining. Alexander writes that:

Am I the only one that finds that they get scarier every day. Facebook not only builds walls that ensure it’s nearly impossible to get out of, but now they also track and trace me while I am searching the web?

.....

Ignorance is bliss they say. I say we’re all a bunch of morons that we allow this to happen. By giving companies like Facebook access to such large amounts of private data we are opening the doors for a privacy nightmare. And that door can’t be closed anymore. Facebook doesn’t forget.

I feel a bit sad about the "we" here. Research has shown that the people throwing away their privacy with gay abandon are mainly Gen Y, who are still too young / naive / idealistic / inexperienced etc etc to know the risks of doing such a thing, and this trust is being ruthlessly exploited by those who profit from this most invasive of digital sharecropping schemes. Old 'net hands like Alexander (and us etc) saying they're unwise to do this are dismissed out of hand, its just the new Parent 2.0 thang.

So how does one get it across to the Bright Young Things that they are being total dumb-asses about this, when so many PR dollars are being pumped into lauding their every disclosure? That this is clearly the next scheme for Facebook to refine its business model is clear, so ther is no point appealing to their better nature (anyway, thats leaving the company in droves, it would seem).

Update - Helen Keegan suggests I spell out the risks of giving too much data away. I'd say, in order of damage magnitude and timing the main things are:

- Identity Theft - can rob you of your money and credit reputation, and takes time, effort and money to put right
- Handing over too much information to people who do not necessarily have your best interests at heart. As an experiment I suggest scraping a profile of someone you know on Facebook, or Twitter etc - thats all their transactions - and see what you an deduce about them, and think about what you could do with that data if you "had it in for them".
- Changing Zeitgeist - what is "in" and "out" changes over time, you will not want to be held up for things in your 30's and 40's that you did in your 20's. Especially as what many people (from every generation) do in their 20's is not always that well advised. Just ask Claire Swires - or maybe not
(Hmm...in hindsight, not just in the 20's - one can be a prat anytime in one's life)

Sadly, the only answer is probably recourse to law and regulation - the only time Google started to take serious notice of privacy concerns, and Facebook ditto, was when regulators started to take an interest (Facebook "withdrew" Beacon after the original blogstorm but its still there, ticking away).