I recently agreed to label acquaintances, colleagues, neighbors and actual friends as my friends. After completing a Facebook profile that required my treating practical strangers as pals, I realized that I had also divulged a lot of personal information. I finally figured out how to limit shared information. Then a distant relative found me by performing a name search. She too is now my friend. Then I learned that by signing on with a profile group, I could receive alerts about who had searched my profile. Hmm. That put a real damper on my willingness to search names from my past --'good for the gander.' Joining also forced me to consider just how much of myself I am willing to share on the internet. I decided that I am comfortable giving up de-identified information where I am treated merely as a statistic. My reading habits are not okay for collection because, frankly, I believe they are susceptible to abuse. I recall my Mom telling me that during the 1950's she purchased a subscription to the Daily Worker for one of her brothers after he vehemently disputed her criticism that we Americans do not enjoy all our guaranteed freedoms. She won the argument after he lost his government job. I recently resisted signing up for free, online access to the New York Times because registration requires providng personal information --I suppose I could just make stuff up. Despite privacy promised by the Times', data can be accessed by accident or through hacking, litigation, or because the information collector decides to change the rules. I also am fearful of the slippery slope. We get used to giving up some information and then some more and more. I am finally reconciled to calling acquintances friends on Facebook since the term means anyone I accept or who accepts me through Facebook. However, I am not yet reconciled to my life being an Openbook.

Postscript: After writing this observation, I realized that should I choose to fly screening technology will result in my private parts not being so private.