What’s the deal on a Facebook Privacy Notice?

Are people really that stupid?

Wait… that’s a rhetorical question.

But this does beg the question: It’s your information, it belongs to you because it’s about you – even if you use FaceBook. Why shouldn’t you have a say in how it’s harvested & used?

I’m not the only one predicting a new era of lawmaking pertaining to this type of electronic stalking.

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Don’t Bother Posting the “Facebook Privacy Notice” That’s Spreading Around

By David Sydiongco

Posted Tuesday, June 5, 2012, at 12:13 PM ET

Just because Facebook has gone public does not mean its user terms and conditions have changed. (Photo by EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/GettyImages)

Since late last month, Facebook users have been posting a legal-sounding “privacy notice.” By putting the notice on their timelines, they hope, they will become exempt from the terms and conditions of Facebook’s “Data Use Policy,” which users agree to upon initially signing up.

Unfortunately, that couldn’t be further from the truth. As the urban-legend-debunking site Snopes explains, “[T]he basic premise is false.”

“We have noticed this recent status update that is being widely shared implying the ownership of your Facebook content has recently changed,” Alex Kirschner, a member of Faceook’s PR team, told me. “This is not true and has never been the case.”

While there are some variations, most of the warnings look like this: