How NOT to be a photo skank on Facebook

Ladies, here's a little tip from an old girl like me. Skanky Facebook girls are a dime a dozen, make sure you keep a tiny bit of your life private. Please.

Rules of Facebook:
1. Try not to be photographed with your mouth wide open. This simply tells us that you haven't been to your dentist in a quite a while.
2. If your nifty new digital camera has automatic focus, then use it. It's there for a reason.
3. Ditto if your camera software can remove red eyes, it's not such a great look, really.
4. If you must sit on the floor to be photographed because you are unfit to stand, don't shoot either up your nose, or up your legs. Nasty.
5. If you are going to take your own photo with your best friend, then don't be a camera hog and take up most of the frame.
6. Always check your background before pressing the shutter button. Are there illegal drugs over there, behind you?
7. I am not sure of the logic of showing us your finer points of being drunk, dishrevelled and disorderley. Was there a point?
8. Try to respect yourself just a little bit - and not upload anything you might look back in 5 years time and shudder. Make that 2 weeks time.
9. Sitting on the toilet doing your business, is your business, what makes you think we would want to see you like that? What were you thinking?
10. Unless you do this all the time in your everyday normal life, please stop kissing the same sex, especially if you are straight, argh. This also applies to men.
11. Learn to use your self-timer if you must insist on taking your own photograph, that was we don't get to see your outstretched arm, every single time.
12. When photographing a group of girls at a mirror, turn your flash off. And make sure you are fully dressed.
13. Are you really sure you want your photo of you making out on the couch shown on facebook?
14. And did you have to Tag him? Ask first, he might be embarressed.
15. Unless you want to walk around with a cricked neck, make sure you turn your image around, not leave it sideways.
16. Learn to delete, and edit. Delete. And edit.

Facebook and the CIA

You might not feel threatened when the CIA's number-two man announces he doesn't take online privacy that seriously — unless you believe he has your Facebook password.

"(In) our interconnected and wireless world, anonymity — or the appearance of anonymity — is quickly becoming a thing of the past," said deputy director of US intelligence Donald Kerr late last month.

"Privacy, I would offer, is a system of laws, rules, and customs with an infrastructure of Inspectors General, oversight committees, and privacy boards on which our intelligence community commitment is based and measured."


Mr Kerr basically announced that the US Government is to be trusted when it comes to monitoring internet activity and correspondence.

And why would the average Australian Facebook user care about this?

Any Facebooker who bothered to read the fine print when signing up should already know they've granted the social networking giant "an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license to use" their personal information at leisure.

If conspiracy theorists are right, the more than 50 million Facebook users who agreed to those terms may have unwittingly sold their online souls to the US Central Intelligence Agency.

If you've got a Facebook and are worried about the men in black peering into your life, unfortunately it's too late to escape.

You can't delete an account on the site, you can only "deactivate" it. All of your information remains with the site, ready to be re-activated (or data-mined by people with the right credentials) at any time.

One possible solution — change your profile name to Donald Kerr, and your interests to "controlling the internet". Delete your contacts, format your hard drive and move to Mexico.