This is a quote taken from a conversation I had with a lawyer about her consumption of news:

“The problem is you people in the media are stuck in your own little world and forget that we’re also quite busy in our own little world and we don’t have time to keep up with what you’re doing.
“We don’t want to have to understand your RSS feeds, we just want to get the information that we need as quickly and easily as possible.
“Handing over 50p and getting that information printed on paper is an easy transaction. It makes sense.
“Fiddling around trying to understand and set up an RSS reader doesn’t.
“When it comes to information online the quickest way is to Google for it. Everyone just Googles.
“Then, if you find a useful easy-to-use site in the Google search results, that’s the site you’ll go back to.”

Being online most of my waking hours, I often think of the identity trail I’m leaving around the web and the issues that has in terms of my privacy.

However, I’ve seldom stopped to think how my activities may affect the privacy of my nearest and dearest.

Tonight, as we in the newsroom sought to follow up on reports that named two girls who have been murdered in Ladywood, it was the latter that struck home.

One of the girls had kept her pictures and her profile public to the West Midlands network. Her sister had been more careful, but there was enough there (her profile pic) to identify her in her sibling’s pics. Family and friends were also listed publicly as “friends” in both profiles.

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