the privacy irony: more or less about social networks

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been to a number of events and conferences where the privacy of social media users has bubbled up in discussions. I’m not one of those people who blurts out "but what about the privacy implications" every time I go somewhere with people in the media or technology industries. But I have started to think a lot, and be concerned about, how much information there is about me online and how that information might be used.

During one of the presentations I gave about blogging recently, I got quite an unusual response from the audience. I took their photo and uploaded it flickr, tagged with the cell location data, using zonetag. I then went to the photo on flickr and used the blog this button to publish it into a blog I use for training purposes. I then went back to the flickr page and added a link to the blog post, then clicked the link to visit the page on the blog. After this, I showed them the visit in statcounter which reveals not just where visitors come from if it’s via a link on a page, but also quite granular detail like their and someone exlaimed, "How can you do that? Is that legal? I mean, how can they just let people do that?!"

I don’t think this particular individual was naive. I think MOST people don’t realise that every action they take, every search they do, every click, every second they spend online is recorded somewhere and, often, mined for details that will tell website owners more about their customers and their behaviour.

Yesterday I  decided to do some non-scientific research. I looked at 10 randomly (not randomly generated, I just clicked different profile links on my friends list) selected facebook friends to see what information they display on their profiles. Here’s what I found:

• Full Date of Birth: 8/10
• Day of Birth but not year: 2/10 (eg. the remainder!)
• Hometown: 6/10
• City or Town of Current Residence: 10/10
• Full Name of Partner: 6/10

That’s a lot of information that could, potentially, be used to apply for an account or identity document, find out where someone lives, respond to the sort of questions usually asked by banks and credit card providers who want to verify your identification over the phone or online, etc.

But sometimes this information is really useful for legitimate purposes. Hardly a week goes by when I don’t get a message from a friend who saw something I said on one of the various social networking sites I use and, aside from kind words and such, this has often led to what I often think of as the ultimate measure of a social network’s usefulness: I’ve landed a free coffee or beer out of my participation there.

Just last week I was reminded of a good friend’s birthday and was able to drop by with a bottle of wine and a card on my way home from work. This week I’ve noticed, on his profile, that his wife is having her 30th in a few weeks time. Last month, had you looked at either of their profiles, you would have also seen the date of their wedding, her maiden name, and lost of wall posts from friends who would be attending. That’s all really useful if you’re their friend. And there’s the rub.

To get the most from a social networking service you need to disclose personal information and the more you disclose, the more you are likely to benefit. If you and those in your network disclose more, you’ll probably find it easy to remember social events and birthdays, easier to land a job through your friends and their contacts, easier to find a last minute date without asking someone who is busy, etc. But the irony is, although disclosure of information leads to greater gains, it also increases the danger that someone you don’t know will find and use that information in dangerous ways.

Yesterday, after my little research project, I removed a lot of information from my facebook profile (and got messages from a dozen people who were concerned by the terse messages facebook puts on your profile when you do!). I’ve also started going through my list of friends and sending friend detail updates to everyone in the hopes that this will help me weed out the people I know and trust from the people I’ve more randomly added as friends.

And if you want to send me a birthday greeting next year but are in doubt as to the date, drop me an email and I’ll send you a reminder closer to the day.