But this is private, between you and I

The inclusivity or exclusivity of CMC tools is very interesting.

As we know, most of CMC tools are Internet-based and people say that it's very hard to maintain privacy in this age of Internet.


Let's take a look at blogs.

I have a friend who used to badmouth strangers and acquaintances in her blog. Sharp. Straightforward. Painful. That's until she had a lot of comments in her blog. Only then she realised that the address of her blog had spread and some of her victims had been reading her entries. Later, she decided to restrict the access to her blog by securing it with a password.


Now, let's take a look at Facebook and Twitter.

You think you can control who you want to be in your circle and to share your (nonsensical) stuff with. Well, yes, you can. You decide whom you want to add as friends in Facebook and who to subscribe to your Twitter. (Am I right? I'm not into Twitter at all.)

But when (unfortunately) your parents are on Facebook and want to be your friends and follow your Twitter? What would you do?

If they do so because they are tech savvy, well, they are cool.
If they do so beacuse they want to monitor you, well, they are smart.

Imagine uploading your clubbing photos with some flesh-baring foreign ladies onto Facebook or tweeting about "Yayy, skipping lecture to grab THAT cute mini skirt with my sweeties!! =))" when your parents can see everything.



I guess we can possibly try to limit our CMC to stay within our desired boundaries. However, when the Internet is involved, this possibility is magnificently threatened. Talk about hackers, worms, identity thieves, and the likes.
Even when we manage to dodge all those, some people whom we rather exclude from selected details of our everyday life (read: parents) might try to intrude the privacy of our CMC meant for friends.

The bottomline is that we can always do our best to protect and maintain the exclusivity of our CMC, but in today's hi-tech world, we'll never know if Big Brother is still watching.