They are watching you

 Things Social Networking Sites Need to Stop Doing:

Social networking is here to stay. Virtually everyone reading this has an account with one of these sites, if not more than one. Social networking sites are how humans interact now, and it will continue until the day the rats eat through our network cables.

That's what makes increasingly annoying and/or invasive social networking practices so much harder to swallow. We want all of the below to stop and, barring that, at least not get any worse. But if they don't, what are we going to do? Ditch our computers and go live in the woods?

Insisting They Can't Protect Your Private Info Without More Private Info

If Facebook is telling you your private information isn't safe, you know it's time to worry -- Facebook is still one of the few places on the Web that 100 percent connects you to your real-world identity. And you don't want strangers looking at those revealing baby photos your mom tagged you in, do you? So you click "Increase protection." But how can Facebook make sure that you and only you can see your personal information? By verifying your identity -- by asking for even more sensitive information.

And here is the paradox of the social networking age. It's like a bank saying it can't afford to put locks on its vault unless you put more money into that vault. First Facebook asks you to give it a second email address, in case, you know, someone hijacks your other email and changes your password when you really need to water your fake crops. That's reasonable enough. But then it asks for your phone number.In case someone hijacks both email accounts, changes all your passwords, and you really, REALLY need to water those freaking crops.

The problem is that you might not even have any sensitive information on Facebook, but if you follow

 these "security-enhancing" steps, you will. Information that can be leaked the next time Facebook has a security breach. Oh, and if you have Facebook Mobile, it's apparently very easy to accidentally post your mobile number to your profile as numerous users found out only when friends asked them if they'd suddenly gone insane.

Tracking Where You Are, Whether You Like It or Not

Location-based social networks are riddled with privacy issues. And you don't even have to do anything. If you're using Foursquare, for example, and your account is connected to Twitter, when your friend checks in at a location you've checked in at, their post will automatically say they're at that location with you. Even if you've set up your profile so that your location is visible to friends only, there are still ways for it to become public, like making your frequent hangouts known to the world, or randomly being featured on some page or another

But that's the whole point of sites like Foursquare, right? To let people know where you are? So if you have a problem with that, the obvious solution would be not to use them. This works perfectly fine with Foursquare, but not so much with Facebook places.

When Facebook offers you the feature, you have two options: "Yes" and "Not now." If you click "Not now," you think you're not using it, but you actually are: It still lets your friends tag you anywhere. And even after you've declined being tagged it will still keep tagging you in the future.

Apparently, asking you whether you want to share your location simply isn't a thing anymore: Both Firefox and Chrome come with geolocation features turned on by default, using wireless networks to triangulate your position and bring you "personalized" search results. It gets worse -- at least Google and Firefox let you turn this off. Recently, Apple updated its privacy policy so it can create location-aware ads for iPhones and such. For example, it might show you an ad for a store or franchise that happens to be near you at any given moment. If you don't agree with Apple's new privacy policy, tough shit -- you can't use their products

Following You Around the Internet (Whether You Want Them to or Not)
Let's try something: Log into Facebook, then go to the front page of any website that has one of Facebook's "Like" boxes (here's one). Now look at those "People who like this" pictures -- chances are, you'll see some of your friends there. How is that possible? There are 600 million Facebook users and you have, what, a measly 130 friends in your friends list?

Well, it's like this: When you sign up for Facebook, it gives you a cookie that remains active in your system even when you leave Facebook's website. This means it's able to follow your activity through any site that has a "Like" box.

Not these kind

The creepy part: It does this with non users too...When you go into a website that has Facebook integration, Facebook will create a tracking cookie even if you're not a Facebook user. A researcher for a Dutch university found out that Facebook uses these cookies to store the online activity of people who never registered on the site, and if they should join later on, that information is integrated into their new accounts. This means Facebook follows you even when you're logged out, as long as you visit sites that have "Like" boxes or Facebook Connect.

But there's an even more effective way for social networks to collect your info: your stupid friends. All it takes is having exchanged a few emails with one careless idiot years ago to be in someone's database. Most social sites have a "Find your friends" option that asks users for access to their email/instant messaging contact lists to find out whether anyone they know is already registered on the site. Twitter shows you this screen right after you sign up:

But even if you're not on Twitter, it will still have access to your name, your email address and whatever information your friend's contact list has about you, which it will save in case you should register later. At least Twitter asks before doing anything, some dubious sites, like Badoo, Imeem and Lockerz, automatically raid the email account of anyone foolish enough to give them a password, spamming every address they can find with fake invitations

Getting back to Facebook (because it's been like two paragraphs since we mentioned it), it does something similar with phones: Users who activate Facebook Mobile are letting FB copy their entire contacts list, including non users.  It also lets people tag you in pictures using your email address and name, so that, you know, you have a few photos of yourself in there when you inevitably sign up. 

Making It Ridiculously Hard to Delete Anything

Let's say you've had enough of these shenanigans and you decide to quit social networks altogether. Sounds simple, right? After all, it took you only a few minutes to sign up, so how much longer could it take to do the opposite? Well, it turns out that quitting some websites is harder than quitting crack -- and that's the way they like it.

It'll make you come back...

For example, deleted Hotmail or Windows Live accounts are kept in their servers for 270 days- that's nine months. And if you accidentally log into your account within those nine months, the account is reactivated, and you have to start over again. The idea is to help former users who suddenly regret ditching their email accounts ... almost a year later.

Facebook keeps deleted accounts for only two weeks, but it makes sure that even getting to that stage is ridiculously complicated. If you search in your account settings, you'll see an option to "deactivate" your profile. Click on that, and Facebook will show images of your friends and you saying "[name] will miss you."

Let's say you somehow make it past all the emotional blackmail and deactivate your account. Guess what? "Deactivating" isn't the same as deleting: All your information is still stored by Facebook indefinitely, and people can continue to tag you in pictures and send you invitations. The REAL delete button isn't in your settings at all -- it's hidden in a place that isn't so easily accessible. To reach it, you have to follow a needlessly complicated set of steps

Even then, you're not out of the woods. As I mentioned, you have to wait two weeks for your profile to be erased permanently, but if you interact with Facebook in any way during those 14 days (including "Like" boxes and Facebook Connect), the account cancellation will be aborted. Let's say you use Facebook Connect on a website and you set it up to log you in automatically. As soon as you navigate into that website, Facebook will assume you regretted your decision and will reactivate your account.

Plus, Facebook pictures are also notoriously hard to delete. Try this: Upload a picture to Facebook and then copy the image's URL (that's the long address ending in .jpg). Now delete the image from your profile and paste the URL to your browser's address bar. The picture will still be there. If you check back in a month, chances are it still won't be gone.

 Think of the implications: Let's say an embarrassing picture somehow finds its way into your profile, possibly due to circumstances involving alcohol consumption. The next morning you rush to delete the picture, but if even one of your friends saw it and copied the URL, he'd be able to access, download and propagate the image for the next month.

Facebook admits that deleted content "may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time" adding that it "will not be available to others," but that's bullshit -- try that URL from before in a different computer, and it will still work. By contrast, sites such as Flickr and Twitter delete images instantly. And speaking of Twitter, it doesn't store your deleted tweets for any amount of time -- but the Library Of Congress does; For, you know, posterity...