Where has privacy gone?

I just read an article in the New York Times that talks about how graduate researchers are finding new ways to identify people on the internet. It says that students from universities all over can use data from sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace to figure things out about you. Basically, what they do is collect information you've entered all over the internet such as hobbies and your favorite television shows and use it to determine who you are in correlation to what your doing on the internet. And it doesn't matter if you use your real name, either.

Netflix has their researchers amplify their recommendation system by 'statistically analyzing an individual's distinctive pattern of movie ratings and recommendations'. How freaky is that? And have you ever noticed that your Facebook page has advertisements on the right side of the page. I can only assume that Facebook does the same based on the information you put on your profile. They put advertisements on there based on my age and the fact that I have certain television shows listed on my Favorite Television Show list.

Grad students from Carnegie Mellon University also say that they can figure out your Social Security number by searching for your birth date and/or state of birth. Apparently, those are used in forging a social security number, which I had no idea of until I read the article.

May I just say that I am officially freaked out now? If graduate students are figuring it out, how long do you think it will be before the identity thieves catch on? Technology is growing every day, and the internet connects more and more people to each other, which makes information on certain people readily available for the taking. Yes, the graduate students might move on to work on ways to make our information better protected. Encryptions aren't easy, but it doesn't mean that it can't be done.

I'm just skeptical about making purchases online and applying for jobs online, as well. I don't put my Social Security out there unless I need to because a company really doesn't need it unless they're giving me a job, and if I'm making a purchase, they REALLY don't need it! I'm not panicking because the best way I can protect myself is to not put so much information out there about myself. It builds up over time, and I usually don't use my real name, but it's hard not to on Facebook where everyone you know is there.

Then again, do I really need to fall into the hype of a social networking site that full of time-wasting games and people from way back when that I'm Facebook friends with, but have never talked to (even when we were in school together)? Ideas, thoughts, queries?

Go to NYTimes.com to read the article:
How Privacy Can Vanish Online, a Bit at a Time by Steve Lohr
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/technology/17privacy.html?ref=todayspaper