It’s pretty simple, shouldn’t take too much time, but it is incredibly important. I need you to go tell someone you trust the most confidential piece of information you know.

Go on. Don’t be shy. Just gush out your deepest darkest secret to a trustworthy family member or friend. No big deal.

Before you leave, let me ask you a question; how are you going to tell them? I don’t mean what words you are going to use, but tactically. What mode of communication would you pick?

In other words, if privacy is at the forefront, how would you communicate with someone? What is the most secure method?

I think most of us probably would come up with the same three. Face-to-face is easily the most secure and private, you can pick your location, you can control your environment, you can visually see the receiver, you have the most control.

Then, probably telephone. It is much like face-to-face without the visual aspect, you can control the environment, and you can identify the receiver by voice.

Next? Maybe letter. Mail is pretty secure if for no other reason than it is scarcely used nowadays. You can avoid a paper trail by burning the note, and there is legal protection should anyone other than the desired recipient open the envelope, and there is certainly a social more to back it up.

How about the least secure ways to talk to someone? I think we’d probably all agree any form of amplification would be completely open – radio, television, and broadcast media – using those methods would literally be giving away the sensitive information. Sell digital products Talking publicly is probably also a poor decision, the law says you have no expectation of privacy in public – if something is overheard, that’s your fault.

I like to consider this the continuum of privacy, on the left side we have the modes of communication that we all agree are unsecure and lack any privacy. On the right, the modes we deem secure and private. It might differ a little by person, but for the most part if you ask people for their choice for a private conversation, you’ll likely get the same results.

But where does social media fall on the continuum? Social media in many instances is becoming the go to source for communication.

I argue that we all have different expectations of privacy on social media. Some treat it as completely secure; others think it’s as wide open as the fields of the Great Plains.

Furthermore, we have different expectations of security and privacy within a social media site. On Facebook we all expect that a private message is between the recipient and the sender, but a comment on a post or a post on a wall is clearly out in the open.

A recent NetPop Research survey showed the distance of concern with privacy on social media. According to the survey, 42% of respondents deemed themselves “uneasy” about privacy on social media, or in other words very concerned. Another 38% said they were “ambivalent” or somewhere in the middle, and 20% said they were unconcerned.

It is without question that a consensus has yet to be reached on where social media falls on the privacy continuum. And there’s a recent trend that is highlighting this range of feeling; the Facebook password scandal.

Maybe calling it a “scandal” is a little over-the-top, but stories of employers forcing employees to hand over Facebook passwords have been receiving no shortage of media attention. The most recent being a teacher’s aide in Michigan who refused to give up her password after the school district caught wind that a suggestive photo had been posted on her Facebook wall.

The photo in question was of a friend, and the woman, Kimberly Hester, refused to give up access to her Facebook account. She was suspended without pay because the school claimed they “had to assume the worst.” The district assumed she had no privacy on social media, Kimberly assumed she did.