Hiding your Face from Facebook

When I got accepted to NYU back in 2004, and gained access to my NYU e-mail account for the first time in 2005, I was psyched. No, it wasn’t the “nyu.eduâ€? after my initials; it was that with the address I finally had gained a coveted key – access to the collegiate realm of TheFaceBook.com.

Today however, Facebook has dropped the “theâ€? and with it any semblance of exclusivity. Slowly my private network of the college elite became the private network of the college and high school elite. This was an outrage in of itself. But before I knew it, anyone could join, and suddenly I was getting friend requests from not my friends, but their parents. In the words of a true Facebooker: WTF?

Remember the days when stalking your crush took at least some effort? You had to ask around or eavesdrop on theirs friends’ conversation to see if he had finally broken up with his girlfriend, or if she had gotten with that other guy yet and if you still had a chance? No more my friend. I’m notified daily of my friends relationship statuses, not when I choose to view their profile, but just by logging into my FB account.

I mean, I’m not the most private of people; clearly, I have 501 pictures of myself on the damn site. But did every single one of my friends NEED to know immediately when I added “Legally Blondeâ€? to my favorite movies? No. Does the public need to see pictures of me unconscious in the hallway of my friend’s dorm freshman year? No. I like to keep my public displays of debauchery only public once, if you missed the show it should just be too bad for you. So I locked my profile doors to the public, and minimized my ‘mini feed’ settings to notify people of my actions as rarely as possible.

Well, or so I thought. But apparently now according to this article posted today on Wired.com, there are still several ways people can access my pictures and profile information without me sending a friend request or even knowing who they are. And I’m not talking that little mini picture that still comes up in search regardless of your privacy settings (unless you change your status to double plus invisible.)

There has got to be a way I can still keep in touch with my middle school graduating class, and not share all the embarrassing pictures of us with the world at the same time. I realize that there is a simple solution to this privacy crisis, just delete my account! Yeah, delete my account and loose 501 pictures of myself and the greatest procrastination tool known to students since the beginning of time? I don’t think so. Luckily this same article points out how to set your profile to double plus invisible, which is something FB is scant to educate you about. Yes, it sucks that you’ll be cutting yourself off from the millions of potential friends out there, but I’ll go with my boss NOT being able to see those shots of me doing bong hits. I guess I’ll just have to leave my dorm, make friends in the real world, and leave my virtual troubles behind.