Privacy
Facebook privacy for novices, employers and ... everyone
February 15, 2009
If you’re a Facebook user, you really must read
10 Privacy Settings Every
Facebook User Should Know.
If you’re a novice Facebook user, Too Much Information: On social networking sites, you may be giving away more than you think is a quick place to start thinking about privacy issues. You wouldn’t want to be this poor dude interviewing for a job (1 minute video), would you?
On the flip side, if you’re an employer, some food for thought in Why employers should reconsider Facebook fishing. It really may be possible to know too much about people you are considering hiring!
Finally, it appears that Facebook has changed its terms of service to say it can keep and use any material you have put on Facebook even if you should close your account with them. Is this egregious or simply pratical? In the end, you’ll have to decide. [Update: Lots of controversy; revision rescinded; but more to come...]
If you’re a novice Facebook user, Too Much Information: On social networking sites, you may be giving away more than you think is a quick place to start thinking about privacy issues. You wouldn’t want to be this poor dude interviewing for a job (1 minute video), would you?
On the flip side, if you’re an employer, some food for thought in Why employers should reconsider Facebook fishing. It really may be possible to know too much about people you are considering hiring!
Finally, it appears that Facebook has changed its terms of service to say it can keep and use any material you have put on Facebook even if you should close your account with them. Is this egregious or simply pratical? In the end, you’ll have to decide. [Update: Lots of controversy; revision rescinded; but more to come...]
Some interesting privacy and technology readings
January 30, 2009
The January 2009 issue of Wired had I Am Here: One Man's Experiment
With the Location-Aware Lifestyle, a
wonderful article on both the exciting
possibilities and the sobering unintended
consequences of ubiquitous GPS. A must-read if
you don’t use these technologies yourself.
What Was Privacy?, in the October 2008 Harvard Business Review, is a stellar piece on privacy. There’s a business slant that makes it even more interesting.
Finally, the cover essay of the January 2009 Esquire, What the Hell Just Happened? A Look Back at the Last Eight Years, has a canny first paragraph that applies nicely in a privacy context:
There is this thing we do. It's a small thing. It's a formality, at worst an annoyance. We do it every time we buy a computer or a device requiring software. We do it when we download software online, and then when the software is updated. We do it in order to buy things. We do it in order to sell or share things. We do it in order to find dates and to expand the universe of friendship. We do it in order to express ourselves in writing or film or song, and then we do it in order to read and to watch and to listen. It is the act of everyone, and it involves everything. And what it is — what we do — is this: We agree. We agree to the terms and conditions of service. We agree to use a product that is not our own — that is licensed, not sold. We agree to entrust and, if our trust is broken, to forgive. In what might be called the opposite of the moment of truth, we are given a choice, to accept or to decline, and we accept. We are in the habit of assent, and so the world we live in is the world we have helped bring into being. It is the power of our powerlessness. Our virtual signatures are everywhere, and yet we lost track of them long ago and have no idea what liabilities they might entail — what we've given up and to whom we've given it.
What Was Privacy?, in the October 2008 Harvard Business Review, is a stellar piece on privacy. There’s a business slant that makes it even more interesting.
Finally, the cover essay of the January 2009 Esquire, What the Hell Just Happened? A Look Back at the Last Eight Years, has a canny first paragraph that applies nicely in a privacy context:
There is this thing we do. It's a small thing. It's a formality, at worst an annoyance. We do it every time we buy a computer or a device requiring software. We do it when we download software online, and then when the software is updated. We do it in order to buy things. We do it in order to sell or share things. We do it in order to find dates and to expand the universe of friendship. We do it in order to express ourselves in writing or film or song, and then we do it in order to read and to watch and to listen. It is the act of everyone, and it involves everything. And what it is — what we do — is this: We agree. We agree to the terms and conditions of service. We agree to use a product that is not our own — that is licensed, not sold. We agree to entrust and, if our trust is broken, to forgive. In what might be called the opposite of the moment of truth, we are given a choice, to accept or to decline, and we accept. We are in the habit of assent, and so the world we live in is the world we have helped bring into being. It is the power of our powerlessness. Our virtual signatures are everywhere, and yet we lost track of them long ago and have no idea what liabilities they might entail — what we've given up and to whom we've given it.
"Douse the Online Flamers"
March 01, 2008
"Today, when cowardly anonymity is souring Internet
discourse, it really is hard to understand how
anonymous speech is vital to a free society." Huh??
Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur, begins with "Faceless Internet sadists who ruin reputations don't deserve full free-speech protection" in this LA Times op-ed (see a compelling case in our own world) ... but then concludes along a bewilderingly different axis that anonymous speech is somehow no longer vital to a free society. Surely addressing the issue of defamation in the online world doesn't have to be synonymous with tainting the value of all anonymous speech?
Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur, begins with "Faceless Internet sadists who ruin reputations don't deserve full free-speech protection" in this LA Times op-ed (see a compelling case in our own world) ... but then concludes along a bewilderingly different axis that anonymous speech is somehow no longer vital to a free society. Surely addressing the issue of defamation in the online world doesn't have to be synonymous with tainting the value of all anonymous speech?
The (working professional's) Facebook dilemma
September 09, 2007
The recent Business week column, O.K. (Sigh), I'll Join
Facebook, hit the nail right on the head for
me: having overcome many of my privacy concerns
(I guess some would call these hangups) about
being on Facebook (with picture and all), I was
still a bit uneasy. Why? The column's tag line -
"But its mashup of friends and business is a bit
unnerving" - is the real issue: unlike Linkedin,
which is clear about a professional bent (you'd
be very aware of what you put there if you're
looking for a job, which I assume many are),
Facebook blurs people from different parts of
your life. Is this just another hangup I need to
get over?
But I have another concern as well. My Facebook profile is tied to my UCLA email account. California Public Records Act requests, subpoenas, litigation and therefore e-discovery are all significantly on the rise. Do I really want to be increasingly mix my personal content with work content in this environment, in spite of the strong incidental personal use provisions embedded in the UC Electronic Communications Policy? I could use a different email account, but then I couldn't be part of the UCLA network on Facebook. [Update: Actually, that’s not true. You only have to use an email account once to prove your membership in a group, and then you can change to another one.]
But I have another concern as well. My Facebook profile is tied to my UCLA email account. California Public Records Act requests, subpoenas, litigation and therefore e-discovery are all significantly on the rise. Do I really want to be increasingly mix my personal content with work content in this environment, in spite of the strong incidental personal use provisions embedded in the UC Electronic Communications Policy? I could use a different email account, but then I couldn't be part of the UCLA network on Facebook. [Update: Actually, that’s not true. You only have to use an email account once to prove your membership in a group, and then you can change to another one.]
"You're an idiot if you use T-Mobile HotSpot"
August 27, 2007
There's good reason to take care when you're at an
Internet cafe or other public hotspot... Web 2.D'Oh!. UCLA folks, you
do use VPN (campus or otherwise) when
doing work, right?
Hey, I'm on the cover of Wired!
July 28, 2007
Me and 4,999 others, that is:
As part of the idea of the "hyperlocal, totally personal
geoweb", 5,000 people were able to submit
photographs that would appear only on their
cover of the July 2007 issue of Wired magazine.
This is very cool, but reason magazine did something more formidable in their June 2004 print edition. The editor's note ("Kiss Privacy Goodbye") says it all: "This is no ordinary issue of reason -- or of any other magazine, either. The cover is an aerial shot of my home in Oxford, Ohio. If you were a subscriber to reason, you would have received a unique copy with your own home on the cover. What's more, the ads on the back covers would have been customized to you and your neighborhood."
I've got to do a better job of geotagging my Flickr shots.
This is very cool, but reason magazine did something more formidable in their June 2004 print edition. The editor's note ("Kiss Privacy Goodbye") says it all: "This is no ordinary issue of reason -- or of any other magazine, either. The cover is an aerial shot of my home in Oxford, Ohio. If you were a subscriber to reason, you would have received a unique copy with your own home on the cover. What's more, the ads on the back covers would have been customized to you and your neighborhood."
I've got to do a better job of geotagging my Flickr shots.
Privacy duo
April 27, 2007
These articles I’ve found worth reading, not so much
for the scare value but to be thinking about what
needs to be thought of. First is the October 2006
Mother Jones article Is Google Evil?
Second is a wonderful article on privacy and the net generation in New York magazine, Say Everything. Though it covers well-trodden ground, it does so admirably. I particularly like this: "Your life is being lived in public whether you choose to acknowledge it or not."
Second is a wonderful article on privacy and the net generation in New York magazine, Say Everything. Though it covers well-trodden ground, it does so admirably. I particularly like this: "Your life is being lived in public whether you choose to acknowledge it or not."