Best Disclaimer Ever!

There's this status post going around on Facebook that lets you copy and paste a statement against the site's privacy violation. Its context: since Facebook has gone public, whatever you put there can be made public without your knowledge. And Facebook doing so apparently violates certain laws that were set in place, like, since the time of the Romans.

Or something like that.

I don't know anymore. The statement going viral has all this legal jargon that sounds really confusing to me. And it also reads like a very official, very grown-up statement, so I get why some of my friends have resorted to copy-pasting it.

Here's the thing though: the only way you can protect yourself and your privacy is if you actually stop using Facebook altogether. You can't claim Facebook breached terms of your privacy when the act of signing up for an account means you do acknowledge opening your soul to the site.

This guy said it best. You've got to love the irony:

Ironic Facebok Status

Conan O' Brien wrote his disclaimer, too. Seriously cracked me up:

Conan O' Brien's take on Facebook Privacy status

A couple of years since being on Facebook, I also grew paranoid of the thought that "liking" Fan Pages means giving its admin(s) the access to harvest my personal information. At that time, I've liked and "become a fan" of about 500+ different stuff. Believing that page admins can peek into my account even if they are not remotely connected to my own circle (ie: friends of friends), I spent a chunk of the day "unliking" these. So paranoid was I, that I made the effort to "clean" my profile.

Since running my own Fan Page on the site, however, I've realized that all that? Is a bunch of BS! And that the day I spent cleaning my account was actually a day wasted. I could never get that back.

There is, in fact, no way for people to look into your personal Facebook profile if you are not connected, page or group administrators included. And even if you are connected to some degrees, I've come to realize that Facebook's privacy settings is, get this --- FULLY CUSTOMIZABLE! It's most intact and safest to use. Meaning, you can keep information from prying eyes, stalkers, advertisers and terrorists disguised as friends.

Wait, that may not be 100% true. I don't work Facebook's backend, so I don't really know what it's like to have access to 800Million accounts (and growing!).

But I've been on the site since 2007 and:

• No one has come to my house to bother my family, based only on the fact that they know my birthdate and the college I went to.
• No authority has come to arrest me. I could not be arrested for posting my sentiments or status post about why my son has not texted back while in the mall with friends, right?
• No one has approached me to say I'm in their demographic and that maybe I should purchase their latest can opener inventions. 
• No one has called at ungodly hours to confirm "what's on my mind?" 
• No one has attempted to hack into my account and steal my photos. Maybe I haven't been posting raunchy stuff enough?
• No one has stolen my identity using various facets of what I've been oversharing on Facebook, like my childhood. Or my lunch last week.

And while it's true that Facebook has my soul since I'm on that site virtually 24/7 that I think they should pay me for being a diligent user , the bottomline is this:  I am the ONLY person responsible for what I put on the interwebs. And if my privacy has been violated, it's because I wasn't vigilant and careful about it in the first place.

The original status post that has been going around:

Viral Facebook status that's a hoax.

Also, worth a read: That Facebook Copyright Thing Is Meaningless and You Should Stop Sharing It

What's your take on this whole privacy issue with Facebook? Are there reasons why we should be afraid of it?