Recently, a livejournal user by the name of Jason Fortuny posted a deviant personal ad on craigslist with the malicious intent of luring in the personal information of interested men. After recieving hundreds of responses, he then posted their information and pictures for all to see (NSFW).

Indeed, what Jason did was entirely unethical and most likely illegal in the state of Washington. But, he did drive home the point that people are very vulnerable to privacy leaks on craigslist, where fraudulent posters abound. More importantly, he revealed how easy it is to get people to part with their personal information–addresses, full names, and phone numbers. Some of the victims included cheating husbands, religious men, and community leaders. All of their graphic pictures and information are now laid bare.

As the avenues for online publishing and replying get easier, we all have to remember one thing: common sense. Who knows how many craigslist personal postings are legitimate? And, even if they are legit, I wouldn’t even think about sending personal information until the other person had my trust.

I’ve also heard about thieves breaking into houses that had listed valuable items for sale on craigslist. Many times, the postings even revealed when the poster would not be at home. Things like this pretty much hand those high definition TVs over to the thugs.

The botton line is that you should treat the streets of the internet the same as the streets in the real world. With the online explosion of social media and user interaction comes the responsibility of the masses to keep their own identities and information secure.

Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook) has sent an open letter this morning stating that they’ve been coding non-stop in response to the privacy concerns involving the mini feeds. In the letter, he says

Somehow we missed this point with Feed and we didn’t build in the proper privacy controls right away. This was a big mistake on our part, and I’m sorry for it. But apologizing isn’t enough. I wanted to make sure we did something about it, and quickly. So we have been coding nonstop for two days to get you better privacy controls. This new privacy page will allow you to choose which types of stories go into your Mini-Feed and your friends’ News Feeds, and it also lists the type of actions Facebook will never let any other person know about.

This is a good compromise, which allows people to pick and choose which types of status elements will appear on their feed. Hopefully, this will quell all the privacy concerns.

There’s been a lot of controversy over Facebook’s new mini-feed feature, which alerts all your friends of status updates.

I’ve already written that this feature is a step in the right direction, and Michael Arrington also agrees with me. The fact is that there simply isn’t any new information being leaked, just that the information is now being aggregated in one place.

Hundred of thousands of Facebook members have joined protest groups, some of which are “Facebook feeds…make them go away!!”, “Students against Facebook News Feed”, and “Mark Zuckerberg, Bring Back Our Old Facebook!” On the other hand, there are a few groups out there in favor of the feeds, one aptly named “Students against Students against Facebook News Feed.”

Personally, I am totally in support of the Facebook feeds. Facebook takes great pains to make sure privacy is enforced, only allowing certain groups of people tied to an educational or corporate account to view profiles. We all have to remember that Facebook is a free service, and you can elect to quit the service if you’re worried about privacy. The people who are worried about the feeds are probably the ones placing too personal of information on the service in the first place.

In essence, the mini-feeds will create a more vibrant social network, allowing people to see what others are doing in near real time. I just hope that all those privacy cry babies don’t ruin this feature for the rest of us.