Education Law

Facebook is Public ... and Permanent

This is a great read for any of you Facebook defenders out there (yes, I am talking to you Miguel). Not only is Facebook public information, which I have said before. And, not only do I recommend against teacher's using Facebook for practical purposes, which I have been criticized for (in a friendly way). But, now we learn that Facebook is not just public ... it's permanent, as in Facebook's policy is that it has the right to "store" and "retain" any data on any page on Facebook. Meaning that those drunk college pictures of you and your friends don't go away so easily. Even after you delete your account entirely, the data remains on Facebook servers and can be accessed in various ways, including through discovery requests, which Scott taught us so much about.

Bottom line here ... Facebook is a dangerous place for people that don't know how to control their Internet identity ... which is probably most of us. Teacher's don't have the luxury of living so dangerously when they have so few lifestyle protections and are held to a higher standard then the rest of society. Its nice to finally find someone that agree's with me:

By now, it should be clear that I'm a Facebook hater. I think there is no way to use the site and maintain control of your privacy. In fact, I think there is essentially no way to stay off Facebook now, which offends my sensibilities. More than once I've arrived at work and had someone say something like this: "Hey, I saw you were at Murphy's last night," because someone I barely know posted a bunch of pictures of a happy hour. That's spooky.

Full post as published by Edjurist on February 20, 2009 (boomark / email).