What is one to do about protecting our privacy online?

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In The Facebook Fallacy: Privacy Is Up to You NYT journalist, Eduardo Porter, challenges  the claim Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, makes that the social network's use of providing its users with greater and more transparent controls over the personal data they share could protect its users’ privacy.

However, given the latest revelations of the mass amount of information shared without the consent of people who have had their privacy breeched, Zuckerberg's claim has been proven as bogus. 

What, then, is one to do about protecting their privacy online? As Porter says, "Even if we were to know precisely what information companies like Facebook have about us and how it will be used, which we don’t, it would be hard for us to assess potential harms".

According to Professor Acquisti, flipping the burden of proof of privacy regulation from  consumers’ proving that data collection is harmful to requiring big online platforms like Facebook to prove they can’t work without it, may be a good place to start. 

My question is - who has the power to make this a mandatory practice?


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