From the linked article:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Article
Is it fair to expect the public to keep such close tabs on their online identity when social networks and companies are making it increasingly impossible to remain anonymous?
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This strikes me as a bizarre question. Who else would you expect to be responsible?
It's important to note exactly what Mr. Schmidt is signifying here. He's not saying that Google is intentionally destroying your privacy; what he's saying is that the internet is, by it's very nature, a public space. Anything that goes online is available to someone, and most of it is probably available to a lot more people than you intended. The solution (as I've been saying for years now) is not to post anything online unless you're okay with it being publicly available.
Certain organizations are making it more difficult to keep yourself anonymous, with Facebook being a prime target for backlash. Nobody is forcing you to use Facebook, however. If a site requires me to be logged into Facebook before I can use it, I can guarantee it's a site I'll never use. I'm not comfortable with my Facebook presence spreading across the internet, which is why I log out of Facebook after I'm done looking at it (and why my Facebook presence has vastly diminished over recent months, as I've noticed an uptick in this trend).
Honestly, if you're not willing to take responsibility for your own privacy do you really expect a for-profit corporation
who explicitly makes almost all of their revenue via targetted advertising to do it for you?