Who am I? Let me tell you...

In my first ever visit to the social networking site "myspace.com," I learned some interesting things:

• Tash is a 35-year-old single woman. Her faith in God is only paralleled by her love of the Denver Broncos. At this very moment (as I can tell from her recent last login), she is feeling thankful (probably because the Broncos haven't lost yet this week).
  
• "Mizz Tina Marie" is just divorced, even though she's only 21. She lives in Connecticut and is interested in using myspace to find a potential date. She does warn, however, that "I'm flattered that my page is so entertaining, that you come by everyday to see it, and you aren't even on my friends list, can you say STALKER!!!"
• Finally, there's Elvis, 21 and from Bridgeport. One click on his page and Vodka bottles start falling from the top of the page. One of his buddies said that, in a conclusion I have yet to understand, all of the alcohol on his site makes Elvis' profile "gay." Maybe such a comment fazed the young man and pushed him to the bottle. Right now, he's listed as "drunk."

Tash, Miz Tina Maria, and Elvis' profile in no way standout; the three do not provide more information than other people (in fact, they were the first three profiles that I looked at before I got bored). In what the Economist calls a "dictator's dream," people are putting more and more information about themselves on the Internet for all to see. Relationship status, sexual preference, likes, dislikes, groups of friends, telephone numbers, location, status -- listing personal information online is not the exception but the rule. Never before, the Economist continues, has so much personal information been in one place. And people are doing this voluntarily.
Social networking sites like facebook are not the only venues in which information we provide personal information. Each search we enter into Google is saved, possibly forever, so that the company can, at best, market to us better and at worst, sell information to curious governments spying on its own people. (In China, Google has been accused of "collaborating" with the government over search results.)
Each purchase we make with a credit card is stored on company servers. Not only do we allow these people to know what we're buying (which for some is scary enough), but also where we frequent.
Some of these conveniences make our lives better. We just need to make sure that we know precisely the consequences of using these services.