When you put something online, it becomes public

Any information you put online in a public place becomes public. Remember, it's digital; once it's created, it's duplicatable. Most certainly, once information is posted on the World Wide Web... it's public.

Even if you delete your comments or the excessive personally identifiable information you've posted, many online companies archive sites on the internet. The majority of the World Wide Web is archived. To get an idea of what I'm talking about, check out this site.

This means most information out there is available to be copied. Anything you post online basically becomes public information.

The exceptions are: online community profiles that have privacy settings turned on (key words: "turned on," they're not good if they're not turned on), commerce transactions (secure socket layer web transactions) when you purchase things, and any account you have that requires a password (assuming you're not posting to a public space with the account).

Online communities pose a whole new set of interesting issues. These communities are everywhere from your social networking profile to your YouTube feedback profile (I think of this every time I see a racist or particularly ignorant comment on their site... identities are so easily traceable).

What exactly are online communities?

An online community is loosely defined as a group of people that primarily interact over the internet rather than face-to-face. There are multitudes of ways to interact over the internet. Some of the most common ways that average computer users interact are:

Consumer feedback sites: Allow users to buy from a site while interacting. Examples are eBay.com and Amazon.com.

Blogs: Short for web logs. They allow users to chronicle entries, that is, put a personal journal online to be viewed by the public. Visitors can leave comments for the blog writer about particular entries. Examples are Blogger.com, and many people "in the know" site Facebook.com and Myspace.com as blogs for their blogging features.

Bulletins/Message Boards: These are groups in which you have a profile, and submit information/commentary onto their message boards or forums. PoliticalForum.com and IGN.com are examples.

P2P (Peer-to-peer) networks: Are very popular and focus on connections between computer users on the network (rather than a large amount of network serves). Kazaa, Morpheus, Napster, and Limewire are examples.

Social Networking: A booming market. Most popular are: myspace.com, facebook.com, and linkedin.com

Rating sites: Allow users to flag, rate, or bookmark articles and websites on the internet. Ideally, this helps users decide and find what's "hot" on the Web. Examples are Digg.com, and Rateitall.com.

Usenets: These include online groups you join based on a specific topic. Google Groups and Yahoo! Groups are examples.

Wikis: Are a collaborative form of online community information. The Wiki flagship is Wikipedia, the largest encyclopedia ever (we're talking 7.5 million articles in 253 languages).

What should you be aware of when you join a community?

Think about it. Online communities require a username, email, and password (at the least) in order to contribute. Many ask for a lot more information than that, but these are the essentials. They may ask for gender, birth date, addresses, educational information, phone numbers (home, cell, work), Instant Messenger names, and even more.

Now really think about that. This is a direct marketer's (telemarketers, junkmailers, and customer information brokers) and data broker's dream find. It can be sold by the owner of the website (read the privacy policy to find out) or there is technology out there that allows from the scrapping and storage of your information from the site.

Second, consider that many of these profiles are public and the comments you leave are available in public spaces. The bottom line: 1) don't post information that you're not comfortable sharing with complete strangers, and 2) read the privacy policy when you join these sites.

Remember that comments you post are permanently recorded on the community site.

The more you reveal in your online profiles, blogs, and posts, the more vulnerable you are to data harvesters... not to mention scams, spam, and identity theft.

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