I'd argue that facebook is as big a threat as gmail, especially when you see how younger generations use it to communicate. Also, keep in mind that facebook tracks and collects your moves all over the internet (hint: look for the little 'like' button on every newspaper/forum/random website and take a look at your cookies from time to time) even if you don't have an account with them. De-anonymization and identification with so-called metadata (cookies, ip addresses, phone numbers, etc) is extremely easy to perform these days.

You can't trust users to make sane choices when it comes to privacy in the exact same way that you can't expect drivers to decide if a car is safe to drive or not. Joe Sixpack isn't going to use browser privacy extensions, clear their cookies, use tor, etc.

Some entity (probably a government/administration of some kind, but I can see NGOs doing that too) needs to be tasked with enforcing privacy laws in the same way that (at least in most of Europe) you are required to have your car inspected for safety and maintenance every few years.

EDIT: Across the EU, the Commission for the Protection of Privacy [1] would be that entity. There are additional government instances in various member states, like CNIL [2] in France.

[1] http://www.privacycommission.be/en/european-union [2] http://www.cnil.fr/ - http://www.cnil.fr/english/

Imagine there are people who want to rob, harm, or blackmail you. They might be the government, ex-lovers, ex-employees, business rivals, people who disagree with you (as in GamerGate), or just insane.

Now say one of your many Facebook friends posts a photo of you or your child on Facebook and tags you in it. They might not even realize that the photo has been automatically geotagged by their phone.

In a situation like that, you'd care about the info posted on Facebook, and you'd have no control over it. You can't force someone to remove a picture of you.

>Who cares about the info you post on Facebook? Aren't services like gmail a bigger threat?

Expand it to Google services and the answer is definitely yes. Facebook takes the data you supply it with, but it also quietly takes things like details of the sites you've visited while logged in that has a "Like" button on them, geo location from the mobile apps, etc.

Google, however, takes everything. Your search history, everyone you've contacted through gmail, your purchases that you've received receipts for through gmail, your location data from Android phones or Google apps, your phone contacts if you've them synced across Google accounts and more.

If you leave location services on, on an Android phone, you can literally view your movement history on Google. Where you've been, when you went there, etc.

I'll be forthcoming and say I mindlessly use these services and serve up the data to Google in exchange for convenience, but in terms of threats to our privacy Google is way, way ahead of Facebook.

It's very hard to decouple from Google. Facebook is easy. I've a Facebook account with minimal information about me on it that I use to keep in contact with family members as I live abroad now. I log in through incognito mode and when I'm done log out. I don't have Facebook owned apps on my phone. The amount of information I serve up to Facebook is nothing compared to what Google get from me every day.

I think it's the fact that they have your real name and face from multiple angles that makes Facebook so dangerous/valuable. Google knows a lot about you but if they don't have your face it's not worth as much when they start using facial recognition everywhere.

It's a really great way to understand your network of associates and form groups. Probably more so than e-mail. Although I'd imagine text messages would be the best cache of information a lot of that runs through European telecom companies and probably isn't as easily routed through to the NSA.