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Because you think, through no longer valid experience or through misunderstanding, that you're only communicating with your friends.

Email is a good example. You carry on a conversation about rectal surgery with email correspondents (maybe your doctor). You may have a vague idea that system administrators or men in the middle may be able to read those emails, but you have the conversation anyway because you assume (with some justification) those are unlikely circumstances. You have just posted about your rectal surgery on the internet (over which email travels).

If you were to find your emails publicly searchable you'd be rightly upset.

I originally thought my posts on facebook were only visible (using the English definition of visible, not facebook's co-opted definition) to my specific friends. Many people probably still think so, and it's not an unreasonable leap.




Or maybe, after having to go through something like that, privacy is not the first, or last thing on your mind.

After surgery, you are happy to hear the good news that things went well, you are on your way to feeling a lot better, and want to share that with everybody.




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