Can Face book be trusted with your info?

CNN IBN Feb 19,2009

sNew Delhi: Interestingly or ironically, it was user protest groups that sprung up on facebook and the treat of litigation that forced the networking site to retract. Here is a warp of the controversy that was.

On Sunday, the day after Valentines, Facebook claims it owns everything on our profiles. Three days later, it backtracks and issues a clarification. But can it be trusted?

Meet Kiruba Shankar. An avid tech blogger, he’s addicted to sites like Facebook, Orkut and YouTube. Yet, unlike you and me, he never uploads anything personal or proprietary. Doing that, he says, means washing his hands of ownership.

Kiruba Shankar, Tech Blogger says, “They don’t say that blatantly. But most sites claim ownership on content on their servers.

To verify Kiruba’s claims, I took a closer look at the terms and conditions on three different sites. Most of us accept them without a second thought. But today, I got a lawyer to explain them to me.

Cyber Lawyer Karnika Seth says, “Among other things, lets them use stuff for advertising.”

Which means, if this happens tomorrow, I’ll have only myself to blame. Deleting my stuff won’t help either. Experts like Kiruba say, most sites store a copy of our profiles, just for safety.

Kiruba says, “They do it for renewal.”

Actually, once your info is on the net, it’s very hard to take it off. There’s no sure fire way to prevent people from downloading or saving your data. And using it many years later.