Recently, when faced with the disclosure that monitoring of its users did not cease after they logged out, a popular social networking utility demurred to give an honest answer. To some degree, the computing public has only just been reintroduced to the concept of a cookie--a prion that is a token of one's visit history and whereabouts that helps the internet function more smoothly.
What some services do is indeed dastardly and one ought to be able to expect some way of turning off their status updates and autobiography of things they're keen on. It was scant months ago that a popular cellular telephone manufacturer (EN/DE) attributed its persistent spying (even when disabled) to an overzealous programmer and said it was not intentional. Given adequate resources and interests, anyone could monitor anyone else's activity online, regardless of membership, of course, but no one wanted their outside interests mingled with the persona that he or she shows to the world.
Social networking sites, however, have made the potential for monitoring less a question of committing resources and more of an untapped given. Untangled, facial recognition software routines even transpose internet and real-world tracking abilities. What, I believe, is the most interesting aspect to this outrage, which--if not apathy disguised--sort of flags when one really faces the prospect of boycotting the service or simply disconnecting, is that members would be convinced otherwise. Skepticism and self-censorship are healthy approaches, because users are not customers. The services are "free" and users volunteer marketing and marketable information that enriches these sites. They may promise cohesion and accountability, but what's exacted for free seems quite the opposite sometimes.
