Strictly private to just 100 million friends

Should we draw the line on leaks?

What to give and what not to give? What? No leaks? Its counter-intuitive for a journo to think about such a thing. Heresy perhaps, but surely theres a line to be drawn about leaking information.

Last weeks massive leak of US military secrets on the Afghanistan combined with the release this week of 100 million Facebook users profiles compiled into a 2.8 gig file available by a Torrent download shows just how vulnerable everyone is. Major companies and organisations have already downloaded the file. The UN, the BBC, Levi Strauss, AC Nielsenand the Church of Scientology and Halliburton. And even the likes of Northrop Grumman. Grumman?

Its not just Cabinet ministers and their so-secret discussions that are at risk. We all are.

Whats the state of your Facebook? Your thoughts, your gripes, your family albums, your likes and dislikes. Theyre all easily passed on once youve posted them. How secure are your emails? Its just a click away from being forwarded to who-knows-how-many if your friend isnt quite who you think she is.

Something similar happened soon after this blog was started, with a friendly email leading to purportedly friendly chats.

Sharing secrets with a fake femme fatale Exactly who was at the other end was uncertain from the start, but it was soon clearly certain that the emails were being shared, apparently to much amusement. The press world is just as advertised, dog-eat-dog if someone wants to be top dog badly enough, or even just for vicious entertainment while taking down someone. The crab syndrome as Sakmongkol describes it.

Many Malaysians are sensible enough to keep their profiles private, available only to friends. But Facebook thrives on friends of friends of friends of friends Who qualifies as a friend now?

Hundreds of people in the US information security, military and intel! ligence fields shared personal information with a fictitious Navy cyberthreat analyst named Robin Sage, (left) whose profile on prominent social networking sites was created by a security researcher to illustrate the risks of social networking.

The US and Americans generally are like that, sometimes unfortunately. Wide open, friendly and trusting.

Is this the end of privacy, asks a Telegraph columnist.

Just today, VentureBeat wrote that being private increasingly means that you have to choose to drop out of society. So dont look to the industrys thought leaders for inspiration. Its going to be up to us the users of these services to vote with our page impressions.

Protect yourself. The right-hand sidebar has a few links on net tools that might come in useful. Learn to use them.

As the man used to say, Be careful out there.

On the other hand, when it comes to this.

RPK doing what he does best: spilling the beans