> I think the guiding principle for Mary...should be that she doesn't type anything into a web browser that she doesn't want publicly known

That was Eric Schmidt's answer a while back too, but I'm not sure it's adequate anymore.

As PG has remarked, more and more of the tools we use to interact with the world are becoming software (and as all software is increasingly web-enabled & socialized, that's often indistinguishable from "typing it into a browser" for purposes of this discussion.)

We're essentially telling people who have very legitimate reasons for wanting to protect their privacy that their other option is to become a Luddite hermit. Is that really the best we can do?

It's a tough question to answer as an entrepreneur, because it probably is a much smaller opportunity, and by definition doesn't enjoy the same viral loops - - but I wish it's one that we as an industry would spend more time on.

"We're essentially telling people who have very legitimate reasons for wanting to protect their privacy that their other option is to become a Luddite hermit. Is that really the best we can do?"

Not exactly. We're telling people that they're not going to have privacy, period. We're assuming that privacy is dead. You might think it's still something that can be salvaged, but lots of people assume that the world is moving to less privacy whatever we do. Which is why we should be education people from the start that, whether we like it or not, anything they type into a computer is basically public.

I especially like Scoble's thoughts on this. He says, rightly I believe, that anything that is a copy-paste away from becoming public, isn't really private at all. He also had the fun adventure of having many private emails being made public as part of lawsuits against Microsoft.

Also, you might want to read about The Transparent Society: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society.

Well, this is a broader issue than I was addressing in the grandparent. There may well be devices which we regard as essential to modern life which are potentially infringing on our privacy (I occasionally wonder whether my android phone is listening to me... it would be so easy to bug it.) But facebook is not essential to modern life. At least, I get along without it just fine.

While that may be good advice for Mary, it is infuriatingly inadequate as a response to the problem. This is like when it was discovered that passenger airbags exploded with such force[0] that they were able to decapitate short women and children (and short men, but there are fewer of them), and the response was to suggest that they not sit in the front seat anymore.

When a change to a system adds a frill for a large group at the cost of making it more dangerous for a small group, glibly responding that the small group should just not use the system is inadequate.

[0] The force was calibrated to protect a typical adult male who was not seatbelted. Which would be fine if not for the HUGE negative side effect.

I don't think its even good advice for mary. The issue is that friends and family and co-workers will STILL post her identity online. She should be able to 100% control facebook's publishing of pictures in which she is identified.

This is response to a tagging comment because its not the user which puts her identity out there, but her friends, co-workers, etc, tagging her, even if she is not a member of the site. You interact with facebook wether you want to participate in it or not.

The only way to stop this now is if they allow you to block all pictures you're tagged in from the public (they pretty much do allow that now, except it just takes the tag off, not the actual picture).

Facebook really shouldn't be waiting until they're brought up as defendants in a wrongful death/battery suit before ferreting out these last bits of stupid over sharing.