• Read Tweets from your timeline.
• See who you follow, and follow new people.
• Update your profile.
• Post Tweets for you.

It's really no consolation that the app doesn't:

• Access your direct messages.
• See your Twitter password.

The Facebook signup page isn't nearly as informative.  I couldn't figure out exactly which data the app would have access to or how it would use that data.  The signup page says "We NEVER post without your permission."  Either they do post Tweets for me or they don't.  That should be simple to explain.

I don't want an app following new people for me, or posting on my behalf.  The author of this article says "when I used my Facebook account to create my profile, Pinterest used my personal information to automatically have me start following common connections."  I have to agree wholeheartedly with her when she says "Pinterest broke a basic tenet of online privacy: To not invasively use my online information."

What am I missing here?  Or missing out on by not using Pinterest?

Were the federal government to embark on collecting a cross-indexed collection of records of our lives with the same zeal as Google, how comfortable would we feel? Now, take away the accountability and transparency that we demand of our government and put the same information into an impenetrable black box held snugly by a for-profit company.

Stross isn't saying that Google is evil (or, I don't think he is). But it's certainly worth paying attention to where your personal data lives and who has access to it.

As more and more nonprofits move to using hosted customer-relationship management tools (CRMs) and venture into the world of social networking sites where data and privacy is pretty loosely maintained, cloud computing should be on the mind of organizations as well.

The findings of the study include:

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