Do You Really Have any Privacy?

Do you. really have any privacy?

I love social media, specifically using Facebook. It gives me instant access to my friends and family. What is funny to me is when Facebook users get all flustered when Facebook allows google searches to find their phone number or email address.

Remember those funny yellow books that would come every year?

If you are an unlisted phone number type of person, it is unlikely that you are using any social media anyway. If someone wants to find my phone number or email address, I thank Facebook for making it easier for them.

Pictures are another issue and if you find unauthorized use of your family pictures, then by all means, get upset. But learning that pictures of your children are seen by strangers?

Note to the paranoid parents: Unless you live as a hermit, your children are seen by strangers every single day. If they are in school, they are constantly around strangers, having interactions that you have no control of. Take a breath and understand that in the world of the internet and digital photography, pictures of your children are out there.

Beyond the internet, there are a number of ways you really don’t have privacy, even if there are protocols set up to make you believe that you do.

Ask any woman who has been to a gynecologist how much that paper sheet covers and she will tell you that there is no such thing as privacy in such a setting.

Go to the pharmacy and pick up your anti-depressants. From the doctor that prescribed your medication to the nurse who wrote down the notes to the secretary who filed your chart to the pharmacy technician, the fact that you are taking anti-depressants is no longer private.

Never mind the insurance company, the people that process the payments to the pharmacy for the medication. Go ahead and wait for your prescription behind that white line “for privacy”, but it’s just another comfort measure.

Forget going into the hospital if you want any privacy. With shared rooms no bigger than a walk in closet, your roommate will no ever single detail of the ailment you are hospitalized for. Pull the privacy curtain if it makes you feel better, but those privacy curtains don’t block noise.

Privacy in the world today is really just an illusion. What you put on the internet will be visible by others and you need to keep this in mind. You can’t complain that you want to divorce your husband on Facebook and then wonder why you receive divorce papers in the mail. It’s all about how you choose to portray your life, so choose wisely.