The privacy changes of Facebook and with how it handles my data is starting to annoy me. Other people have noticed the problems with it as well, and I have seen quite a few new e-mails and articles appear to address the privacy issues. Those warnings have always existed since this is the internet, but now that data is being intentionally rearranged for marketing purposes.

I have played with a couple methods to automatically disassociate myself from tags and messages without closing my account. If I succeed, I’ll make it available since some of you worry about your privacy as well.

Tonight, I came across a project called Diaspora that is making waves. In less than a month, the developers have raised almost $150,000 (by the time that you read this, it will likely be above that). Their original goal was $10,000 to pay for the work.

Diaspora is almost like social networking with e-mail. You have your own server where your data is stored (there are plans for a hosted server with Wordpress). Other people will have their own servers that will be able to talk to your server. The difference is that since you own and control your own data, you get to control how they access it.

For the technically-inclined, the data will be encrypted with GPG to ensure your security. There will be scrapers involved to pull your data from existing sites, such as Facebook or Twitter. You will also be able to post data back to those places, if you choose to.

The initial release is scheduled for September of this year. I am definitely curious, and there is a good chance that I will configure my own server. I made this blog because I did not trust other blogging services.