Personal & Privacy, where did you go?

I feel that with websites like Flickr or Facebook our “personal” moments aren’t personal at all anymore. People fail to realize that uploading any pictures to these third party sites isn’t always the smartest thing to do. I realized this even more when I have been asked to see my wedding pics so many times by someone that really doesn’t need to see them anyway. So from this point on I refuse to upload any personal pics on Facebook and will only upload those pics to my personal server. Even a “personal server” or sending an email isn’t that personal being we have to use a third party site.

I was also inspired and impressed with my favorite browser Opera new add on called Opera Unite. They made things simple by taking away the third party websites and made it possible for two computers to share content with eachother directly from a web browser. To some this might sound weird, but trust me this will make a persons life so much easier. I’m not saying that this should replace all third party sites, but we shouldn’t trust so many with so much personal info. For that matter using Opera Unite is still using something third party, but obviously it’s a lot different from uploading my personal content onto a server that later stays with them even if I think I deleted that photo or info.

We assume the best, but that’s still a chance we are all taking. Opera Unite at least brings it up and gives everyone a choice. The more choices we all have the better. I think Opera Unite will make a lot of third party vendors upset and I can careless. At the end of the day it’s all about the consumer and making them feel safe. What do you guys think?