Privacy theatre of the absurd

Monday, December 28. 2009

Privacy theatre of the absurd

Useful article on TechCrunch about Privacy (or lack of it) in social networks:

At least those Terms of Service (ToS) that force us to copy addresses and phone numbers one-by-one also prevent scoundrels from stealing our identity; reselling our friends to marketers; and linking our life online to the real world. Right?

Wrong. When RockYou can stash 32 million passwords in the clear; when RapLeaf can index 600 million email accounts; and when Intelius can go public by buying 100 million profile pages; then our social networks have traded away our privacy for mere “privacy theater.”

With apologies to Bruce Schneier’s brilliant coinage, “security theater” (e.g. the magical thinking behind forcing passengers to sit down and shut up for the last hour of international flights), social networks have been dogged by one disaster after another in 2009 because they pursue policies that provide the “feeling of improved privacy while doing little or nothing to actually improve privacy.”

As long as the same information that social networks piously prohibit their own customers from using is being bought and sold on the open market by giant marketing companies, social networks are only pretending protect your privacy.

There's not a lot new here (we covered the economics of all this in 2008 with one of the papers on Freeconomics, "Why your data is Free but everywhere in chains", but nice top see it in a big article on TechCrunch. To be honest, I genuinely thought the post Beacon 2009 was the year the Privacy stuff would hit the fan, but it didn't - its only really the real digerati who understand what is being done in and to your name. The rank and file still seem not to know or care.

Maybe 2010 will be different? I hope so.....

Posted by Alan Patrick in Identity / Profiles / Trust at 21:17 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

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This is similar to a question I asked at the begining of this year - http://shkspr.mobi/blog/index.php/2009/01/how-safe-is-your-social-network/

You sell your privacy in return for the "benefits" of a social network. The only way to be safe / stay private / keep control is
a) A decentralised social network
b) Not taking part in online social networks.

T

#1 Terence Eden (Homepage) on 2009-12-28 22:24 (Reply)

Good points Sir Freecloud. I care. Deeply. I read Jason Kincaid's article in TechCrunch earlier in December (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/09/facebook-privacy/) - here's what it made me think:

Facebook has finally made the dramatic shift from a personal network to a public one - where the content that the individual places with Facebook is by default, shared with everyone.

This may sound subtle on the surface, but when you think about interaction design, an exceptionally small proportion of users will diverge from the prescribed route. For a site as popular as Facebook, with over 350 million users, this means that most people's content will be publicly available.

When I think of content, this means every interpersonal interaction with your Facebook network, that will include partners, family, friends, colleagues, alumni and just people you've bumped into and exchanged Facebook contacts with.

Every action that you carry out within Facebook (or a Facebook connect site) becomes available and therefore an opportunity for monetization. And all the web 2.0 companies are hungry for a decent revenue model, so you can bet your bottom dollar that they're going to be extracting every ounce of value they possibly can from it.

Remember, your data has value, it is the new oil...

#2 @gammydodger (Homepage) on 2009-12-29 00:13 (Reply)

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