Personals are not so personal: Government is looking

"New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon's National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks. And it could harness advances in internet technology - specifically the forthcoming "semantic web" championed by the web standards organisation W3C - to combine data from social networking websites with details such as banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals."

People are signing up to social networking sites like myspace.com because they think it's cool to tell total strangers something about themselves. Sure, I guess I can see that, I mean, the guy in Iowa is dying to know more about my likes and dislikes, so why not tell him and whoever else is interested.

Well, the National Security Agency is interested but it's not because they want to be friends. They can use the very data people post to connect people and discover patterns that you yourself may not see. Ordinarily, this isn't really a problem because most of what people post is harmless, more is absolutely meaningless. But, here's the problem: it may be meaningless to you and most people, but if someone knew another item of information that item could be used to infer something about you that, whether true or not, could be problematic.

For example, suppose you post pictures of children and talk about how much you like kids. Harmless, even laudatory. But now suppose someone who is "close" to you, say, similar name or lives near you, or goes to your school, posts something about pediophilia. Well, one can posting could be connected to another and, viola, you are a pediophile. (The usual problem especially for the NSA, revolves around terrorism, but the idea is identical.)

Of course, you're innocent but now you have to prove that. Proof of innocence is very difficult not to mention the time and effort you have to go through.

In short, social network sites are attractive, even fun. But there's a downside that you may not see. Start to look for it and stop posting personal information.