We want privacy from the government, but we're an open book on social media...

I recently trailed a friend – inadvertently – through New York City, during a Facebook chat.

Each message he sent via the mobile app, Facebook Messenger, came with a pushpin corresponding to his precise location, allowing me to trace his journey on a Bing map. Social media sites are notorious for privacy invasion, but I found this instance especially unsettling because – if I could zero in on my friend's whereabouts, he could likely pinpoint mine.

It's ironic that, at a time when many of us are outraged over the US government's "spying", quite a few of us are either willingly or unwittingly giving up some of our own civil liberties.

Although there's an important distinction to be made between information we voluntarily sign away and private data that's seemingly subject to unwarranted searches and collection, many of us are inconsistent in our release of personal data. We're quick to hand over our privacy rights to corporations, but we get touchy when the government tampers with our information – even when we might be the ones allowing it. Full story...

Related posts:

1. Forget Prism and the NSA. The real threat to your privacy is YOU...
2. Every picture you take is secretly encoded with your GPS location...
3. "Why I have nothing to hide" is the wrong way to think about surveillance...
4. Privacy matters even if you have " nothing to hide"
5. If you have done nothing wrong, you don't have to worry, right?
6. If you've done nothing wrong, you have everything to worry ...