In light of all of the freaking status updates I’ve been seeing from assorted friends, it seems that the fine folks at Facebook have adjusted their privacy settings so that now your profile page may be indexed by search engines such as Google, firehosing an unsuspecting public with your lunch selection, snide comments about your colleagues, and photos of your cats and their latest antics.

New Facebook Privacy Settings – NYTimes Gadgetwise blog

This got me to thinking about Kids Today(tm), and one of today’s other big news stories – how they’re all “sexting” one another, sending comments ranging from the saucy to the filthy, and photos of themselves with their bits out.

Teens and Sexting – Pew Research

And then there’s this – the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider a case of whether a police officer had a reasonable expectation of privacy when sending more than 200 sexually explicit text messages using his department-issued device. Like SCOTUS doesn’t have anything better to do.

Justices will determine privacy of government workers’ messages – CNN.com

Personally, I think that the notion that your digital information – whether text messages, photos, account information or health data – is actually reliably private, is kind of quaint. And frankly, you’d have a greater expectation of privacy if you weren’t giving your information to (for example) Facebook. Which is a business based on the sharing and segmentation of this information which you give them voluntarily in exchange for accessing their network and the free content therein. (Aside – I am curious to know the carbon footprint of those damned Farmville updates.)

And so I offer this piece of advice to anyone using the Internet:

Live your online life as if you were standing in Grand Central Station. Keep your wits about you, your wallet in your pocket, don’t trust strangers, try not to act too drunk, and keep your pants on.

Where we briefly were able to sustain the illusion that we could compartmentalize our online personas, technology and The Cloud (to misuse the term) have evolved. All of your data is becoming more connected and increasingly accessible. As a dear friend used to say “information wants to be free.” And it will be. These bits are more adept than water at insinuating their way through the smallest cracks and fissures to puddle up where you least want them.

There’s only one reliable solution.

Comport yourself appropriately.

No, it’s not as much fun as cutting loose and mooning those conventioneers. But there is value in not having secrets that can get sprayed all over the Twitterverse. You think that I’m proud that so many of the search results on my own name bring up a book I co-authored with my mom 15 years ago? Not really. But then again it’s not a photo gallery of a bikini wax gone tragically wrong. This I can live with.

Yes, people do foolish things and always have. And technology has greatly eased the worldwide dissemination of these embarrassing moments. I think we’re going to get more tolerant of online indiscretions. That said, why be the one pushing the envelope? Or testifying in front of the Supreme Court about why one was sending scores of “often-racy messages to his wife, his girlfriend and a fellow officer”  (I’m not even touching that) while supposedly on duty as a member of the SWAT team? Just mind your bits.

Now, of course, someone is going to surface some mortifying photo from when I was 16 or 28 and doing something foolish. Or decide that it’s open season on my personal e-mail messages sent from my work computer. I consider those to be calculated risks.

Now,how do you protect yourself and your data?

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