If you haven’t seen any Facebook links to this blog since April, you are one of many who I unintentionally cut off from Facebook status updates by setting my privacy settings too tight! Please accept my apologies, and welcome back to Tuesdays with Terry!

There’s a lot of pondering to catch up on since the last post you may have seen; I have continued to post weekly despite the accidental security block. I just never realized the Facebook links weren’t visible although I was wondering why my status updates weren’t getting any comments or likes!

Speaking of Facebook security, how about this proposed new policy that allows Facebook to use even more of your information publicly without any approval other than your forced consent to their new usage policy? I’m not real keen on giving up more control of my identity without my approval or appropriate compensation just because Facebook is a useful communication device. At least on a blog I maintain copyright ownership of what I write. People can see my image and other material I publish but it’s my choice. I’ll probably keep using Facebook, but I may strip out as much personal material as possible and just use it more like email or Twitter.

Since I’m ragging on Facebook let me share a couple other thoughts. When you see “scare” posts about personal security or contaminated foods or other provocative stories, please check them at www.snopes.com before sharing. Many of these stories are simply intended to spam Facebook or perpetuate myths with the assistance of concerned Facebook users.

Also if you’re encouraged to share something like a recipe or other story to “make sure it gets posted to your timeline” please think twice about whether all of your Facebook friends are interested to see the story or if that’s really where you want it saved. If you think we’ll be interested, go ahead and share it. But if you really just want to save it for personal use, open a document on your computer and copy the story or recipe to the document. That way you don’t have to go to Facebook to retrieve it, and you always have it, even when you don’t have an internet connection. Not that some of those recipes aren’t very enticing; just think twice about sharing please!

Well, sorry about the rant; I’ll shut up now and try to be more positive in future ponderings.

Welcome back…

-Pondering Pops