I’ve gone back and forth on social networks for years. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Friendster, Flixster, Last.fm, Classmates – the list goes on and on. I couldn’t decide if there was really any value in them for me, and what about my privacy? Most of the social networks’ privacy policies are difficult to read, and many appeared to actually give the companies ownership of my information. Why should I agree to that?

In 2005, I decided to give one a try. After all, millions of others must be using these sites for some reason. I joined LinkedIn, mainly because my husband had joined and found it useful for keeping up business contacts and networking. I made a profile, but because of my fears about privacy and my general wariness, I gave LinkedIn the absolute minimum amount of information I could. Not surprisingly, I wasn’t contacted by (or linked to) anyone, and I saw very little value in it. My husband, however, filled out a detailed profile and linked to a number of respected friends and colleagues, and he began receiving messages from recruiters with job possibilities.

After a while, I started to reevaluate my position. Obviously, there was some value in LinkedIn – my husband was benefiting from it – and maybe, if I took the time to check it out more thoroughly, LinkedIn could help me too. I slowly began expanding my profile, and I found a number of past and present colleagues and linked to them.

This slow change of heart spread to other social networks as well. I was once staunchly opposed to Facebook, but, after finding many of my friends from college, high school and even elementary school there, I joined that one too. I’m now a member of a few social networks, and I’m happy to say that I think they have enhanced my life in some small, but meaningful, ways.

Through Facebook, I’ve been able to reconnect with old friends; my profile has begun appearing in searches by recruiters on LinkedIn, and I’ve started to use Twitter to keep up with friends and other technology bloggers. I’ve joined some other sites less for the networking and more for features they offer. For instance, I like to keep track of my books and get new recommendations with GoodReads and LibraryThing, and I like to listen to my favorite musicians and discover new ones through Last.fm.

Although I’m much more open to social networking sites now, I still think it’s a good idea to be a little wary of them in terms of privacy. It’s very difficult to decipher many of these privacy policies, and companies sometimes do share and/or sell users’ information (or use it other ways users haven’t specifically authorized). In 2007, the site Quechup was widely criticized for harvesting users’ address books without permission. And possibly worse, hackers often try to mine user data from social networking sites. Two MIT students were successful in downloading the personal data of over 70,000 Facebook users in 2005. I don’t want to scare people from using these sites at all, but I do think people should consider these risks and think carefully about what personal information they’re going to share.

When I sign up for a site, I always use an email alias rather than my real email address. (Both Yahoo Mail and Gmail offer these options.) That way, if the site sells my address or if someone uses that address to spam me, I can just delete my account with that site and delete my email address alias, and I stop the spam problem immediately. Another option would be to set up an email account that’s only for social networking sites.

I also avoid giving out my earth address, phone numbers and other sensitive data to these sites. Do Facebook or Last.fm really need that information? I don’t think so. If I decide later that I want to share that information with other users, I can easily just email them with it.

Social networks are great tools. They let us stay in touch with family and friends, help us find job opportunities, indulge our personal hobbies and more. But social networks are tools – kind of like hammers. They can help us build great things, but they can also hurt us, if we’re not careful with them.

As always, thanks for reading my blog, and happy networking!

Copyright © 2009, Kathy Keating and TechKathy.com. All rights reserved.