Serious concerns about privacy on the WWW
I’ve begun to realize how serious the very idea of privacy can be jeopardized because of the web. The web can be a pandora box that may profit malicious folks.
This blog post was triggered by an encounter that I will remember for a long time. Last week, I met, in a semi private, semi professional context, an entrepreneur, someone that shouldn’t have known anything about me but that basically knew everything about me before we even met.
He showed me:
- my CV and professional network through LinkedIn
- who I hang out with through Facebook
- ‘what I’m doing’ through Twitter (although my Twitter has become private since then)
- where I went, how I and my sybils look like through browsing my pictures on Flickr
- my private address thanks to a ‘Whois’-ization of Tech IT Easy
- what I think, how I think, through reading the blog posts I’ve published for 15 months
- what I bought and sold on different eCommerce platforms
- the authors I like, the books I read, the movies I watched, etc. on U.[Lik]
- the videos I published on various VOD platforms
- how I react through all the comments I left on many different blogs
- the articles I read on del.icio.us
…and a lot more public things that I promised I wouldn’t mention here. All I can say is that it was bloody (UK; in US, that would turn out to be ‘fucking’) scary.
The guy actually knew more about me than my own self.
Fortunately, his whole idea was about tackling such identity issues on the World Wide Web. The idea was brilliant, but as I told him: executing and establishing a strong market position will be tough. Anyways, the meeting couldn’t be more eye awakening.
Identity Management on the WWW is a very serious issue, a high stakes poker. I decided to save 2 hours to myself every week to brainstorm alone on this issue: what kind of information am I okay making public, what kind of information that I leave public today should I turn private tomorrow, how do I protect myself and those that I love from intrusions, etc.
This is a very serious issue. Probably one of the top three current challenges the Internet is facing.
CRM, Consulting, Economics, Education, Entertainment, Entrepreneurship, Europe, Facebook, Friends, Globalization, Google, Internet, Public policy, Security, Storage, Twitter, Video, eBay, innovation, user-generated content
Honestly, I don’t see how this is in any way surprising.
- you have blogged for over a year with around 400 posts
- you are on linkedin with all your details and contacts in public
- same with facebook
- you are on u-lik with everyone able to see your taste
- etc. etc.
This publicness is a. self-inflicted and b. just part of the reality we all have to deal with. The thing is, we all know this from the start. When we blog, we don’t disclose financial or other sensitive information. When we add stuff to linkedin, we do so because we want to disclose it. Etc. etc.
So what is the answer? Rip the internet-cable out, stop blogging? No, just be as careful about what information you want to put on the web about yourself as before.
I think that your surprise comes from the fact that there are two different situation on the Internet when you display personal information: one is to market yourself (your blog, your comments on other blogs, your Linkedin profile), and the other is when you connect with friends (Facebook, and probably your Twitter as I remember you told be that you prefered Twitter not to become mainstream). In the first case you are really happy when somebody tells you that he stumbled upon your blog, in the second case you find that really weird when somebody knows the private jokes of your friends displayed on your Facebook wall. Which is why, for the second use, we have to be really careful and do not hesitate to make some private profiles.
I had almost the same situation a few months ago: I was doing a presentation on innovation at eBay, demoing all the great communication tools I use to operational people and management team. They found that very cool, and the day after a great number of them was joking about knowing what I was doing every hour via Twitter. It wasn’t at all prejudicial, except that I realized that some people I didn’t really know at eBay could now judge me on other criteria than the ones I was showing at work. And the image we are building of ourselves in a professional environment can be quite different from the one we are displaying online in our daily life, on Twitter in particular. And it’s precisely this gap that can be prejudicial and that we have to manage.
Come on, Jeremy ! Don’t tell me you’ve been twittering and flickering and blogging all that time w/o knowing that it would go online on something called *the World Wide Web* !
Maybe you’ve been too much involved in those stuff – thru your studies, your job, your passions – for you to realize it ?
Now, take it as a lesson, and the next time you go twittering, tell something false : it’s a game, Buddy
Guys, sorry I didn’t make my point.
I obviously knew, as a blogger, twiterred, flickerer, U[Lik]er, etc. that all this information about me was available.
I just never happened to come accross the idea that such information could be gathered, stored in a database, and accessed by people with not necessary the best intentions.
Say I twitt that I’m abroad and these people know my address thanks to WhoIs…Understand the idea?
That’s scary.
Jeremy : same in the *real life*. For instance, when you’re going on vacation, do you claim you’re about to leave home for 3 weeks to the entire neighborhood ? The only difference with the Internet is that your neighborhood is the entire World – which is scary somehow, I agree
@Fijdi indeed, and I think people should be extra careful about what they disclose on the internet. For instance, Facebook, for some reason actually has it as a default to share your profile and everything in it with your network. If France of the Netherlands is your network, how crazy is that?
My simple philosophy in life is that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. I don’t put any information online, even in a closed environment, that I don’t want to share, or where I at least feel sure that it is ensured, e.g. online banking.
Usually, it’s people that don’t know an environment well that make mistakes (e.g. a 5 year old running across the street) and the most important thing you can do is not lock this person in with more “secure” services, but educate them on what they need to know. I do think there is a gap in the market, I get called everyday by one, it’s called my anti-technical parents, who do get viruses, spam, etc.
Very interesting but not really surprising. Another reason for me not to share photos on flickr and not to join too many of these web 2.0-communities.
It would be useful to discuss here what can be done in order to protect oneself. Why don’t you write a little bit more about that mysterious company (or business idea9?
What do they want? How large is their datacollection so far?
Nope Matthias, can’t say anything, sorry.
Maybe I can just say that they don’t ‘collect’ data but are able to build your full profile (with lots of information including address, work, etc.) from what they find on the net by clicking on a button.
Well, Zoominfo is already a significant player on that field, isn’t it ?
Jeremy, check out this post by Stephanie Booth.