When is providing information, providing to much information?

Yesterday I was asked a very interesting question by my girlfriend. She asked why I actually putted all these links and messaging usernames in my signature. I was a bit quiet on that, because I don’t really know. To give people access to my data, and my pictures and so on. Still the question remained, why?

Is it to show off? Or to share your thoughts about things, only to hope that someone will like it. Or is it to share things with real life friends about my live here in Madrid?

I think for me it’s as well another point. To guide people to the places I would like them to find. For example for friends it would be my pictures, and my stories in friendfeed.

But as well for more professional related tasks this is interesting. If you can keep your information centralised, it becomes very handy to supply the potential work partners the information they need and you want to share.
It’s much more streamlined, especially since all my social profiles like facebook and myspace don’t contain any information or are totally blocked down.

So, is to answer the question, when is open to open. For me the answer is when you don’t have anymore control about the information spread. If I see some things coming up about myself without me remembering it, there is a control problem. It’s even not about the type of information, but about the fact that I don’t have control anymore about it.

What are your thoughts about this?