Facebook: the new Big Brother?

One of our readers has sent us a warning to Facebook users — a site which he says has far too much information about our private lives.  

Sacha Dratwa is an Israel-based Belgian specialist on online social networking.

Facebook is basically an enormous avenue on which every user opens a shop with a window display on their private life. With all the information you upload onto the platform — photos, interests, occupation, hobbies, favourite books, films and music, marital status, political leanings, dress sense — you're handing over your electronic DNA to the network's managers, and all for free!

Facebook knows everything about each user. The obvious next step for the company is sell our profiles — which we ourselves have created — to companies more than willing to survey and analyse our habits in order to create more efficient — even personalised — advertising.

We no longer have a private life. We've reached a stage where our bosses can find out what we do at home, where our children can follow our adult relationships, our colleagues can spy on us and advertisers can find out exactly what makes us tick. We've lost our freedom and the ability to do the things we like without anybody's knowing about it. Through Facebook, we're unknowingly feeding companies which manipulate us by watching us.

As a Facebook user myself, I wonder if it really is a social network platform and not the world's biggest people database?