Privacy issues

    From Boyd's reading I found that the potential ability to reconstruct a user's social security number by knowing their birthdate and place of birth was interesting.  Most people generously give out their information on social networking sites because it is asked for.  They do not think about the simple possibility that their social security number could be obtained by that information.  The more we provide the more we expose ourselves to identity theft.
    The social network that I currently use is Facebook.  I do have a Myspace still  but I cannot remember the last time I used it.  I switched over from Myspace because it became less appealing to others even though I liked the concept of making the backgrounds.  Facebook became more popular and a lot of my friends began to use it so there was the turning point for me. On Facebook there is the privacy settings that they allow you to change to your own preference.  I have utilized this function to make my profile the way I want it to be seen and viewed by others.  One thing I noted was that when they created a new system for privacy settings it wiped out the previous settings I had.
    In Boyd and Ellison's reading they stated that in 2005 a study that was conducted by Gross and Acquisti they studied 4,000 Carnegie Mellon University Facebook profiles.  This is when they found that social security numbers could easily be reconstructed.  If this was an immediate threat Facebook should have been addressed and sent a message to its users concerning their privacy.  For myself I know I do not provide my full birth year and currently have all my information in different places I am not from.  This way it is hard for others to find me.