Sunday, April 17, 2011

Some thoughts about privacy

I am married to an admitted conspiracy theorist. In the time we have been together I have had (and taken) opportunities to tease her about how she is paranoid about privacy.
She hates for me to give up any information she considers to be private to anyone at anytime, but I tend to think about things like that a little less. For instance, if someone phones me (and I answer - which is rare) but say I answer the phone - and someone begins to ask me questions. I have in the past been quite forthcoming with my answers. Whenever I hang up the phone Shel is there with eyebrows raised wondering who it was that I just shared the intricacies of my life with. In 14 years of being together I HAVE learned something - I am much less inclined to share information over the phone now than I ever have been before.
Which brings me to facebook. 
We both have facebook accounts and we both have our privacy settings set very high. We both play games on facebook - farmville, citiville, mafia wars, and I play Carmen Sandiego. In all of these games, and especially in citiville, you rely on friends to progress in the game. Shel has made friends with people who "only" are gaming friends. They all play the same group of games and they are are very serious about sending and receiving gifts and supporting one another throughout the gaming process allowing for the most success for all of them.
I am envious of her gaming friends but I think it is insane to have friends who are not actually people that you know! She has suggested one or two of them to me because I get stuck in my progression in some games but I just cannot bring myself to friend a complete stranger. Am I insane?
Instead of friending complete strangers to play games with, I have created a facebook account for my dog. She's a great facebook gaming friend. She always sends me exactly what I need and I know she isn't going to do some weird stalkerish thing to my facebook account.

1 comment:

Dancin' Momma said...

You can friend people but limit their access to your information. That is what I often do with people I really don't know well.