I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did - Social Networks and the Death of Privacy - By Lori Andrews - Book Review - NYTimes.com

It may surprise anyone under 16, but even before the advent of social networking we faced threats to our privacy. A hospital accidentally releasing patient records or a shady marketing firm engaging in Stasi-like data collection — such violations were substantial enough and disturbing enough to make the evening news. Today, however, the “death of privacy” is more like death by a thousand cuts: information leaks out slowly and invisibly, and so routinely that we’re hardly shocked when it does. Internet companies, which use the word “sharing” almost as a euphemism for “oops,” like to pretend these lapses are normal, even natural. If Mark Zuckerberg’s private photos are up for grabs (as when a recent glitch exposed his Facebook account), what can the rest of us expect?