Monthly Archives: September 2012

Goodbye Facebook

Imagine my surprise when I logged into Facebook recently and saw a notification that I had 13 new “Friends”.  I hadn’t sent any friend requests to anyone, and hadn’t approved any friend requests.  So how could I have 13 new “Friends”?

These friend requests were somehow generated by Facebook.  Some were to people who actually were friends, but others were to people I didn’t even know.    Some where people who weren’t friends, but associated with companies for whom I work on my day job.  And the friend requests were approved.  Pretty creepy.
 
I simply can’t tolerate Facebook sending friend requests from me to whomever it thinks should be my friend.  Call me nit-picky, but that seems like a serious security violation.

I filed a bug report with Facebook.  You’d think this would go to the top of the bug list, and evoke serious concern in Facebook management and software developers.  Obviously not.  I never heard from them.  And a couple weeks later it happened again. 

So I deactivated my account.

Around this time I heard stories of prosecutors using Facebook posts as evidence in court of your location at a certain date and time.  A musician friend told me of police showing up at their gig and arresting one of the band members for outstanding traffic tickets, based on his publicizing the gig on Facebook.

People enable GPS and Facebook on their “smart” phones, and their location is posted in Facebook as “checking in”.  I find this very creepy.

As a songwriter, singer and musician, I naturally want to promote my music.  Facebook can be one of many tools for doing that.  But is it worth the price you pay?

I’ve decided it’s not.