Will The Internet Betray You - Are Social Networks Your Friend or Foe?

Not long ago, I was discussing with an overseas acquaintance the reality that so much of who we are is now online that you can go look up just about anyone and learn all about them. Today, there are conspiracy theorists who say the NSA is creating a dossier on every American in the country, which may or may not be so, but if it is, why would they stop there? Why not all planetary humans? Talk about the data base from hell, that would be a whopper, and something like that misused could literally create hell on Earth, especially for those who have come to expect freedom and liberty during their life experience.

Now then, my acquaintance had assumed that I went online to look up all the information about him, which was a false assumption, you see I hadn't. Not that there wasn't any curiosity there, it's just that I had other things to do, and since our conversation was light-weight, it didn't matter anyway. He noted that there was ample information online to verify who he was, what he had done in his life, and thus, his potential to perhaps work on one of our up and coming projects. Still, he noted that he tried to keep his online information to a minimum, but admitted he couldn't hide everything considering today's Internet.

Yes, the Internet is interesting, sometimes I think it is our friend, other times, I wonder if it is the enemy, as I see friends posting on Facebook etc, which I do not participate. You see, right now those behind all this Big Data, Cloud Computing, and Social Networking phenomena are busy trying to figure out how to best exploit all this data, so it should not surprise anyone all the behind the scenes activities with big time corporations, advertisers, marketing companies, and yes, intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Not just here, but around the world.

Consider this, your data, information, contacts, associations, etc. could be shared by foreign nations, international criminals, multi-national companies, and it already is to a lesser degree, but what I am saying is this will become the norm, and you'll just have to accept all this. So, I guess you ought to be asking yourself if the Internet and the social networks you play on are ever going to betray you in the future. Are those social media sites, and social networks your friend or foe? Please consider all this and think on it.

Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative series of eBooks on Future Internet Concepts. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net/

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