Privacy

So a while ago I wrote a post about Time and Timelines, within which I mentioned that I had recently begun purging my Facebook Profile of all posts older than a certain date.  There are various motivations for this but the main reason is privacy.

In a traditional world, when you meet someone for the first time they know nothing of your past, what little they do know and learn over time is what you choose to share with them.  There are a small number of people I value a thousand times more than their weight in gold, with whom I would share everything and answer any question when posed, but that level of confidence has to be earned.  With people you are not that close to but you are still friends, your past for all intents and purposes would be a closed book.  Extracts shared when necessary for the furtherance of your story.

Privacy is as much about your past and your future as it is about your present.  Who you were and what you have done, should be treated with the same level as your present state.  There should be no belief that what has happened in the past should be public knowledge as it has already happened, while from the point of view of a timeline that may make sense, from the point of view of an individual it does not.  We are who we are because of out past, and we will be who we are going to be, as a result of the events in our lives that we choose to remember and allow to influence our decisions.  Our past is not dead, our past lives on within us.

The longer you use the internet, the more information about you as a person is gathered.  Up until a week ago Google held over 30,000 searches I had made, all of these where catalogued as Google's History service was active.  I have since disabled Google History which now no longer stores these records, I have also chosen to clear my History wiping clean all those searches.

All of this was brought to light in the past few weeks as a result of Google Privacy Statement being revised.  After reading a BBC News Article: Google Privacy Changes in breach of EU Law

I also found the link to Google's Dashboard very useful for reviewing exactly what Google currently holds.