The fabulously written post Privacy Theater: Why Social Networks Only Pretend To Protect You on Tech Crunch by Rohit Khare is a must read for those even moderately interested in digital identity. The post speaks to the fact that despite cleverly written Terms of Service agreements the social networking site still treat the individuals digital identity as if they own it and not the individual. This is much the same as with individual medical records were the providers (doctors, clinics, hospitals, the government) believe that they not the individual, whose data they have collected, own the information.
- "I’d argue that the hapless state of ToS enforcement by the major social network platforms only provides the feeling of improved privacy while doing little or nothing to actually improve privacy: that’s privacy theater."
The scary thing, as pointed out in this article, is that as an individual you don't have access to the full set of the information you own but the social networking sites do. These social networking sites have no qualms providing it for cold hard cash to data aggregation companies.
