I value my privacy – and that's why I'll never use Facebook

Unlike most of my friends, I am not a fan of Facebook. Handing over personal photos, sharing intimate moments, revealing what’s going on behind my (very firmly locked) front door – no thanks. As a result, I’m considered a bit of a curmudgeon – friends want to know what’s wrong with taking advantage of an easy way to communicate quickly and effortlessly, using it to meet people with similar interests, share high and low moments, find solutions to intimate stuff from baby rash to incontinence?

My loathing is such that I had a fake JSP site closed down on Facebook a while back – and that wasn’t easy to achieve. My position as a non-believer is widely seen as weird, not to mention pathetic.

Up to the recent scandal, you’d think that Facebook was nothing but a force for good in the world, to the extent that its founder had started to reportedly express the desire to move into politics, and bring users together to solve humanitarian and social issues. Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg implied, could achieve results that elected politicians could not. How many still think that?

Following revelations that users’ data was harvested without their knowledge and used to influence political campaigns, a movement to dump Facebook is trending on Twitter. It’s a non-starter, just as the campaign to get off YouTube was the other week. We are addicted to social media and sod the consequences.

Our personal data is continuously mined on a daily basis by advertisers and social media platforms, and the concept of privacy is – to anyone under the age of 20 – a very elastic concept. My generation grew up cherishing the concept of privacy, and came reluctantly to the modern notion of “sharing”. Our parents worked hard and long hours to get a home, and they were not the generation that flaunted their “stuff” – whether it was freshly baked cake or a new family car. Photos were for holidays and family celebrations.

My generation had to learn to use computers, and some of us were suspicious from the start. What were we giving away with every new technological innovation? I only want to “share” what I’m doing with a closed group who I know from face-to-face meetings and I trust – but is my attitude safe or sad?

Years ago, I campaigned against the introduction of ID cards – I fought against the gradual introduction of CCTV cameras on every high street, and opposed the constant monitoring of our lives in the name of national security. But the rise of radical groups willing to use extreme force on our streets has allowed security services and governments to justify the huge increase in surveillance and monitoring – and most people would support that.

The police log a huge amount of personal data – but are they capable of keeping it safe? This week, the police finally admitted that they supplied information on more than 3,000 trade union members to construction firms who used it to vet anyone applying for work – resulting in a secret “blacklist”. The police also used male undercover officers to infiltrate protest groups – allowing them to form relationships with unsuspecting innocent women – all in the name of national security.

The Government wants a “Snooper’s Charter” to restrict police access to our phone and internet records to investigations into crimes that carry sentences of more than six months, but are those guidelines sufficient? Last year, two police officers were prosecuted for selling the details of thousands of car crash victims to claims firms, and there have been plenty of other examples of the misuse of data.

Every day, intimate details about our lives are divulged to third parties we’ve never met when we shop online. How many times do you bother to read the privacy settings on a website? The urge to consume and make a quick purchase overrides any need to be vigilant. From the moment I used a smartphone, I opened up another chink in my armour. It sits on my desk, silently monitoring my habits, my movements, my browsing preferences. My laptop might have a bit of duct tape over the camera, but it’s just as bad. I am under constant surveillance and it bothers me a lot. Yet – all the women I work with happily film their children in their homes and post those images on Facebook and YouTube. Burglars can see so much, I worry. What about perverts who can use those images on the dark web? They tell me I am paranoid, that posting stuff on Facebook is “fun” and they can’t imagine giving it up.

Facebook and other social media platforms make it easy for the lonely and the elderly to chat, they say. I still believe that our constant reliance on screens to chat instead of three dimensional encounters is deeply damaging.

Mark Zuckerberg has belatedly apologised for “a major violation of people’s trust” but I’m sure he’s realised this storm will blow over and for most of his lemming-like users, their intimate relationship will resume as before. Some major advertisers will threaten to withdraw from Facebook until there is more policing and control mechanisms – just as they did on YouTube – but after a discreet time, they will return. Privacy will soon be an antediluvian concept.