My thoughts on the Google+ forced public profiles

I was going to have this in my Google+ Stream, but it's too many characters to be there, so I'll just create a quick and dirty blog instead.


https://www.google.com/support/profiles/bin/answer.py?hlrm=en&answer=1192471

This was brought to my attention a few hours ago. At first I was a little hesitant and debated deleting my Google+ account, but as long as it's the way I think it is, I am okay with it. I thought about it and realized something. If I understand that correctly, the bare minimum amount of information is your name and profile picture. Now naturally people would think this would be cause for alarm: It isn't.

First of all, Google+ is a SOCIAL network, keyword there is "social", if the caps didn't make that more evident. The name and picture are there so that the people you want to find you can find you and add you to a circle, then you can choose whether you want to add them (thus sharing information with them) or not. Unless Death Notes (which is from an anime, you should watch it if you haven't already) exist, there is no way someone would be able to use your name and face to harm you. Those aren't your address. They aren't your phone number. They aren't your passwords to your computer. They're just a name and face, something everyone has, and is seen all the time if they go anywhere in public ever.

I imagine the first argument against this would be "But Matt, they can use that to find me on other places in the internet." My rebuttal to that? They can find your information that's out there at whatever place you don't want them to find first. They wouldn't have to look at Google+ to find it in the first place.

The next argument would be: "But Matt, what about when I apply for jobs and such and they Google my name and find my Google+ account?" Well providing you hid everything from public view that you could, only your name and face would be available, which you would think you want that future employer to know. Unless your profile picture is you smoking a marijuana bong while wearing a Batman costume, you have nothing to worry about. Mine is just my face with a Mario hat on. If any employer has an issue with that then I'll probably go work somewhere else because I'm sure I'll have many more issues down the road with said employer.


The bottom line is: Don't be paranoid. Google is trying to help people with that, and not everyone is understanding it. I do think, however that there should be some rules put in place. I don't know all of the G+ terms and such, so someone correct me if I'm wrong, but they should have rules in place where either people under 18 are not allowed to have G+ accounts, or their profiles are not public, or sub-accounts of their parents' account, or some system like that.


It's a social network, so be social, let the people you want contact you and turn away the ones you don't, it's really that simple.