On April 7th, I cleaned out my Facebook locker: cleared all personal info, removed all photos (except 2 profile pics), removed notes, removed groups and pages, prompted others to admins of groups I created, etc. The only thing left is a message pointing people to my web site. I left a lot of friends confused, wondering why I did this. The answer is: Facebook is the greatest threat to personal privacy and is an unchecked power.

There is a lengthy page on Wikipedia about all the criticisms Facebook has garnered over the years so I won't get into how piss poor Facebook has handled privacy issues. Facebook can dig deep into your personal lives and so many people don't realize just how deep it gets until it's too late. Facebook wants to be the mechanism by which people connect. If they had their way, there'd be no email or IM, cell phones would only be used to take photos, movies and post status updates, etc. Do I sound paranoid? Maybe a little, but let's look at it this way:

Facebook is a for-profit company that has a financial and legal responsibility to make money for its investors (they'll feel that pressure even more when they go public.) They spend more per month on power and network bandwidth than most people make all year. Anyone may create a profile and use all the services Facebook provides for free. The principle way Facebook makes money is to sell you - your demographics, your intimate moments, your prized achievements...everything and anything that will make them money. Now I don't have a problem with that because that's the business model they've adopted and it is understood that that is what is going to happen. However, because people put more and more into their profiles, interconnect their Facebook account with other web sites and services, the more Facebook can enrich...or crush your life. Case in point, I signed up with a local community web site using my Facebook account. Since I no longer wish to use Facebook, I've severed that tie with the local site and everything I had going on there. The link is lost.

That may have been my choice, but here's the kicker - Facebook can terminate your account, without prior notice, at any time, with no recourse. They did this to my wife. No clear explanation, no means of appeal, just a "we've disabled your account" web page when she tried logging in. If she had linked other accounts to her Facebook login, she would be completely locked out of those accounts. Reregistering on Facebook won't relink those accounts. Creating new accounts on the other web sites won't reconnect her to past history either.

I can't deny Facebook the ability to terminate accounts. That's actually a very necessary thing. What I do have a problem with is the way they handle it:

• No clear explanation as to why they disabled the account. This is the number one thing that bothers me. The page my wife got was very generic, listing several reasons why they disable accounts, but not indicating which she was "guilty" of.
• No warning. For certain types of infractions I can condone terminating an account without warning. For others, warnings are certainly warranted. She got no warning.
• No appeal. The page she got specifically said "This decision is final and cannot be appealed."

Facebook has real impact on people's lives. Some people have become so dependent on it that severing that tie could be devastating to them. For others, it may be their only link back to friends and family (true, there are other forms of communication but not with the flexibility and "richness" of Facebook.) Facebook has the potential to cripple you, if you let it sink its claws deep enough into your life. The choice is yours.