Why You Should Be Careful About What Information You Provide in an Online Profile Form

Do you have a Myspace or Facebook page? What about any other social networking or online gathering profile? Did you list your favorite books, movies, music, TV shows? Were you honest about your marital status? What about your sexual preference? How many friends or buddies do you have? Who are your heroes? Tens of millions of Americans and hundreds of millions-if not a few billion-people worldwide have all expressed their likes and dislikes on publicly accessible web pages. It's a good way to find people who share your interests. It is an even better way for corporations to specifically market products to you.

It is called data mining by those who view it as an invasion of privacy and an efficient marketing tool by those who don't. It has been inexistence for millennia, dating all the way back to Roman census takers, and probably long before that. But the information that exists about you has exploded in the 21^st century and what you may view as an entirely harmless expression of individuality is really nothing more than a goldmine of information about your consumer identity. Every ten years in America complicated census forms arrive in mailboxes and you are essentially required to turn it in, though I'm not sure if any actual punishment exists should you not. The information on those forms tell a lot more about you and your family than you would expect. But that information is nothing compared to what can be extrapolated from just an average MySpace or Facebook profile.