Privacy and Controls on Orkut.com

I don't know if this will be read... but I guess I can take a chance, even if it is miniscule.

Coming to the point, I really feel that Orkut.com should not be a completely open environment. It should give users some control, by giving them the option of restricting access to their profile and scrapbook, since its very personal. There are many people including myself who wish that their profile/scrapbook should not be viewed by everyone, at least not by those who are not in the circle of friends or the "network".

One thing that I feel that would really improve privacy in Orkut would be the denial of access to view a profile for someone who is on the ignore list.

I understand that it restricts the purpose of Orkut as a free environment wherein you can find your old mates by just searching and looking up their profile. But I feel that we can always use the power of a "network" ( friends of friends of friends ) to look up old mates. If anyone is really serious about finding their old mates, they can always look up their friends' lists. It almost always works. Orkut.com can also have the search option modified to search only the user's own "network" instead of the entire database.

I agree that it would be a complex task to implement, considering the efforts needed to be taken and the layers of security which would be required.

But I feel that it is a necessity considering the kind of impact Orkut.com has made in the social networking scene and "lifestyle" in general. I don't feel confident about the safety of the users, especially when details about them and their lifestlye are thrown open to everyone. You really do not want some peeps to know what's going on in your life.

If anyone does want to make pen pals all over the world, they always have the option of joining "communities" containing people with common interests, although at their own risk, because then again their profile would be thrown open to everyone. To tackle this problem, Orkut.com can have the concept of Open and Closed communities, meaning just what the names suggest. The result of the explosive growth of Orkut.com is that almost anyone who uses computers for networking is on it and there are countless communities on almost all aspects of our world - A case of 'you search it and you find it'

I appreciate the "Don't be evil" motto of Google.com, but its not enough to deter anyone from being evil! There have to be more controls in place than the existing ones.

Especially when people start interacting and living more on Orkut.com than the real world!!!!

And when you know there's a small evil side in each one of us :)