Online Privacy - How we made it social!

Mon Mar 22 12:00:00 IST 2010, by Abhishek Mehta

Offline or Online, privacy is synonymous to confidentiality i.e. "Not Public". Ironically, people who are cynical about privacy in personal lives let it run haywire as netizens. Social Networking, micro-blogging, chat messages, bookmarking, location tacking and photo sharing are just few services at the helm of privacy violation.

Online salvation is not easy, Internet rules and regulations differ from nation to nation, and location to location. Above all, average netizens is neither well informed nor well aware of the implications of their online actions, which can lead to their own privacy breach.

Please Rob Me

"Please Rob Me", no one will ever say such words but many netizens do it everyday. Please Rob Me is a website, an online campaign that lists updates of Twitter and Foursquare from people who are telling the world that they are not at home. Location-based networks know your home address; when you login from some other location it assumes that you are not at home. Unknowingly netizens give away information, uncovering their location and making them susceptible to robbers (in context). Another factor, which "Please Rob Me" has taken in account, is when someone tweets about his location.

Though this website is still online but it no more show the messages, as it has been successful in putting across the dangers of online privacy breaches. Be careful when you disclose your location next time, there might be someone else ready to rob you.

The Online Social Network

Online profile is an open essay about an individual, and it is complete with messaged communications. Multiple profiles on different social networking websites combined together have enough information to write a book (with photographs) about this individual. Finding similar/overlapping profiles is no rocket science; all it needs is some good data mining techniques, image recognition, paid accounts with social networking websites and a hold of their free/paid webservices.

Online information assimilation about an individual is not harmful till it is used harmfully. Going by the example of "Please Rob Me" all depends on what do you give away online. Even if you are cautious, friends and family might be pretty generous about distributing information about you. All of the information is not sensitive but that does not make it public in any freaking way.

Some companies are doing online background checks before hiring new employees. They hire firms, which are experts in finding social media reputation of individuals. Obviously, no one wants an employee with a loose noose.

Many researches have shown that youngsters nowadays are more online networked than socially. 6th August 2009 that attack on twitter, which brought it down for couple of hours and also affected Facebook and some other websites showed the dependence, which people have on Social Networking sites. People were not only outraged but were also found comparing it with the blackout. It is ok to be in love with social networking, but online privacy should not be compromised.

Online nexus of the policy makers/breakers

Till now, I covered the rough elements (Internet Black Markets) that might exploit the online privacy loopholes but some others are trustable privacy breakers. Web browsers to online emails, calendars, documents, books, websites, advertisements and search engines come as a single package. In nutshell, companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo etc. provide all these services under one umbrella. They know ins and outs of your online behaviors.

Technically, these companies don't know anything about you (as per policies). But they store huge amounts of data about your actions on their servers and that of their partners. What you write, what you visit, what your interests are, and what advertisements you like and what are your shared networks, they use it all for targeted ads display. They have complex policies about data sharing among their own services and, its shady.

If your cookies are turned on or not deleted often or you have shared accounts with many web services, the possibility is that these behemoths already know too much about you.

Online privacy is the matter of personal choice for those who know the implications of its breach. Many social networks now provide privacy features that can be turned on and off. But it is the habitual netizens who often overlook the deeper implication of the features before adopting them. It is just like "Terms and Conditions" checkbox, click it and continue. Be careful next time, before adopting any new feature on your network.

Courtesy:

Free Stock Photos for websites - FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Posted at 11:40PM Mar 22, 2010 by ABhi in Trends  |  Comments[0]