Information is the currency of the decade and perhaps the century. Simply put second to hard products (anything you can buy and hold) information is the second most lucrative market around. Companies pay for studies on just about everything under the sun and companies like Gartner, Forrester Research and many others have long realized this and put out lots of reports on a weekly basis to fill the need.

Privacy is a sticky issue and ultimately it is about control of one of the few things that is truly yours or at least it is till you give that information over to someone else.

We all learned these lessons long ago on the playgrounds of our youths when we told someone a secret and they found more power in sharing that secret rather then in building our sense of trust in them by keeping our confidence. However despite the lessons of our youth one can not seem to exist today without sharing some of their information with others and or systems which may or may not be worthy of our trust.

So where does ones expectation of privacy end and legitimate web commerce begin? Does the couple who buys a house on a private road have the right to sue Google Maps because the system host photos of a house that anyone of us could see just by strolling down their un-gated street? Should Google pay the price when even better images were already part of the public record at the local county assessors office.

Facebook and many social networking sites have faced their share of privacy issues however a lawsuit filed just this week which claims on page one to be about Facebook's violation of California privacy law seems in the eyes of Eric Goldman, an Associate Professor, Santa Clara University School of Law, seems to be a, ]"rant-y complaint from users who seem to dislike all of Facebook's product choices". Mike Masnick of TechDirt is quick to point out that, "there's an easy way to avoid any such issue. It's called not using Facebook."

Seems logical and straight forward enough, if you do not want your information shared do not give it out beyond trusted and or regulated systems. If you send an email you know it is going through other systems in route to its eventual destination. Want more secure transmission then encrypt, use the US postal service and or your trusted man servant to deliver it.

But despite the obvious insecurities and or flaws in the systems we all continue to be willing to trust or perhaps over trust systems and companies.

Simply put to not trust some of these systems puts you at a disadvantage. The US postal service is perhaps one of the most secure ways to send private information (backed up by federal law) however if we are both bidding on the same job and I email mine (using my trusty gmail account) my bid will get there faster. Likewise you can choose not to participate in social networking but to some extent you are only hurting yourself.

My brother in law, an author, got a good lesson in the potential and hence potential loss from opting out when this week he sent me a clipping of an article on his latest book, "Deep Travel: In Thoreau's Wake on the Concord and the Merrimac." Now despite the fact that my wife's Facebook profile and post are protected by Facebook's quite elaborate privacy settings the simple act of posting a link to the article above and my commenting on it has lead to several sales of the book from friends and friends of friends who picked up the link in their feeds.

Both my wife and her brother would be quick to point out their own concerns for privacy however at some point this issue of privacy can also leave you chained in a Plato's cave facing a blank wall where shadows projected are of things displayed but never truly seen.

Every entrepreneur knows nothing venture and nothing gained. You can not meet that girl, boy, person if you do not give them your name however the moment you do, you give up some of your privacy.

The question really is whether the risk is greater then the potential gain and are you really aware of your risk? Now I would argue no one will safeguard your privacy as well as yourself and in fact allowing senseless waste of our legal systems time to protect you is not achieving anything.

We all give up some of privacy everyday in simple and common actions, the question is our you aware of your privacy and do you control it or does it control you. Facebook has some elaborate privacy settings (so does Linkedin and every other good social networking platform) but I am willing to bet that a vast majority of ExecTec members have done little or nothing to adjust these settings giving access to valuable private data like maiden names (mothers maiden names) and other facts classically used in security questions. For that matter most people still use a password that is clearly tied to fact found there as well.

So the question really is who issue is the privacy issue?

Will we chain ourselves and our providers of information services to a system that will regulate and prevent slips of private information or can we take charge ourselves by limiting the information we put out there and who we share it with?

Are you and your company looking to your privacy issues and what is needed to assure you maximize opportunities and limit exposure/risk?

Join us as we delve in to the not so private side of privacy.

As always, there is no better way to meet and connect with other executives then over dinner and conversation. $21 in advance via PayPal or $25 at the event gets you a full dinner, drink and the best networking around.