The Wall Street Journal published an article today entitled “Having Lots of Online Friends Could Mean Privacy Trouble.” The article articulates some of the institutional privacy concerns that some users do have and suggests that more users should have.
Now, i do believe in privacy concerns and i’m genuinely worried about institutional misuses of private data, but i’m not the average consumers. As we all know, consumers will happily sell their privacy. They don’t understand the implications of this. And thus, there’s no incentive for corporations to not try to collect it and make money off of it. This is where the government should step in. But since the government is controlled by corporations….
Anyhow, i won’t follow that rant.
The big thing to realize is that most consumers are far more concerned with local privacy, or intimacy concerns. They’re worried about their friends taking their information out of context, about their mom seeing something intended for their friends, of a future boss seeing a drunken picture. Consumers are far more concerned with those who have limited local authority over them than institutional authority. [Yes, here’s an opportunity for a study…]
> Having Lots of Online Friends
> Could Mean Privacy Trouble
>
> By JENNIFER SARANOW
> THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
>
>
> More friends could mean less privacy.
>
> When Meredith Rosenblum first joined social networking site Friendster in
> July, she tried to find as many of her friends as she could. Now with 48
> immediate friends and more than half a million in her “network,” the
> 27-year-old advertising writer from San Francisco thinks she may have too
> many pals.
>
> Two months ago, an online suitor she wasn’t interested in, and had told
> so, entered her e-mail address in Friendster, found her and sent her a
> note: “Ha, ha. I found you.” Turns out they were connected by one friend
> — and though the mutual friend vouches for the guy, Ms. Rosenblum found
> the whole experience creepy.
>
> “When you first sign up you are so sucked into finding your friends, you
> don’t realize how much access people have to finding you,” she says. (She
> still occasionally uses the site.)
>
> Online social-networking services such as Friendster (www.friendster.com
>
> for people to extend their circle of friends and contacts, but privacy
> experts caution that the services make it easier than ever for strangers
> to find out who people associate with. While much personal information is
> available on the Web, lists of friends generally aren’t. Amid these
> concerns, some networking sites have started adding tools to protect
> users’ privacy.
>
> “We want to give the user control over all their information,” says James
> Currier, chief executive of Emode Inc., which recently launched the Tickle
> networking site.
>
> Dating and other online services often encourage the user to divulge
> personal information and tastes. But what has privacy experts worried
> about networking sites is that they create visible maps of social networks
> for tens of thousands of people to view.
>
> “It’s your extended social network out there, up for grabs in a more
> visible, concentrated way than it normally is in the fabric of every day
> life,” says Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier
> Foundation in San Francisco. “These sites present a very rich source of
> association data, which is one of those things the civil-liberties world
> considers to be very important.”
>
> Users join sites such as Friendster by creating a profile of their
> interests and goals and then invite friends or business associates to be
> part of networking communities. Users can click through their friends’
> profiles, then on those of their friends’ friends and so on — to various
> degrees of separation. Some, like Friendster, limit searching at four
> degrees while others, such as Tickle, are accessible to anyone signed up.
>
> Betsy Burton, who works in public relations in New York, has been a member
> of Friendster since June. “I just feel like you wouldn’t join a site like
> Friendster if you were concerned about any kind of secrecy,” she says. “I
> think it’s a choice.” Still, Ms. Burton, 25, says she knows “a lot of
> people who got really into it and then totally freaked out,” feeling like
> people were keeping track of their friend counts.
>
> Ms. Burton views the site as a fun place to click around every few days
> when she has free time at work, taking a peek at people’s friends and
> interests. “I think it’s fascinating to look at people’s social circles,”
> she says. “It’s like a social climber’s dream.”
>
> Meanwhile, other users say they do have some concerns and have figured out
> their own methods of retaining an element of privacy. Marc Magnelia, a
> health-care consultant in Berkeley, Calif., joined Friendster six months
> ago. Concerned that so many people would be able to view his profile and
> potentially track him down in person, Mr. Magnelia, 35, purposely didn’t
> include his location or details about his job, and wrote vague or
> imaginary interests (For example, Botox and competitive eating).
>
> “There are millions of people out there potentially and I didn’t think
> [the information] was important enough to be put there when you weigh it
> against the potential for abuse,” Mr. Magnelia says. Ms. Rosenblum, for
> her part, recommends creating a special e-mail address only for the
> networking site.
>
> Most sites specify in their privacy policies that they won’t give away
> personal information unless required by law, but legal requirements can
> span from subpoenas from law enforcement to subpoenas in civil cases such
> as divorce proceedings and insurance, corporate and bank investigations.
>
> Users of networking sites, as they do with dating sites or instant
> messenger services, use pseudonyms or truncated names, providing a good
> degree of public anonymity. But subpoenas can ask a service to turn over
> identifying information, such as full name and contact information, as
> well as communications within the site.
>
> “I think there are good questions to ask regarding whether individuals
> understand first of all that law enforcement could gain access to the data
> and use it to identify suspects or people with similar ideologies, and
> that access could occur through the sites’ consent,” says Chris Hoofnagle,
> associate director at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in
> Washington.
>
> The Federal Bureau of Investigation hasn’t made use of social networking
> sites, according to spokesman Paul Bresson. He didn’t want to comment on
> hypothetical situations, but said the Internet is another tool to help
> investigations, and noted that the FBI still uses old-fashioned
> communication mechanisms such as telephone records.
>
> But online lists of friends have been used by law enforcement. America
> Online spokesman Andrew Weinstein says buddy lists have been provided in
> law-enforcement investigations.
>
> Beyond possible legal access to online social networks, privacy experts
> say just the fact that so many people, including potential stalkers and
> criminals, can see the networks online raises concerns. In addition,
> people may unknowingly end up revealing information such as their sexual
> orientation to people they never intended to because those people are
> somehow in the same network.
>
> Aware of such concerns, many networking sites say they have started
> implementing new privacy tools. Three months ago Ryze.com, a networking
> site with 60,000 members, gave users the option of three levels of
> privacy: High, Medium or Low. High privacy consists of letting only people
> within two friends or members of “networks” (interest groups) contact and
> within four view, while medium means within four friends or members of
> networks and low, everyone on the site.
>
> “We know that people have different concerns in this area and some people
> are trying to promote themselves and their business to the world, but
> other people just want to keep in touch with small group of people,” says
> Adrian Scott, Ryze.com founder, who adds soon there will be networks that
> aren’t publicly visible on the site at all.
>
> Meanwhile, Emode’s Mr. Currier says right now users can control who sees
> their data according to degrees, but eventually the company plans to let
> users control who sees what data, person by person.
>
> A spokesman for Friendster Inc., of Sunnyvale, Calif., said there were no
> privacy issues on Friendster, and that the company couldn’t comment on
> future features. Currently, users can only view profiles that are
> connected to them by within four degrees of friends. Users aren’t required
> to post photographs to sign up, and are only required to have a valid
> e-mail address. Users can also choose how much or little information to
> include in their profile.
>
> To be sure, association maps aren’t the only privacy concerns network
> sites pose. They also collect loads of data just like many other sites on
> the Web, raising the question of what they do with it. For now, most
> sites’ privacy policies say they don’t sell data entered in the site but
> may use it in an anonymous aggregate form to inform advertisers.
>
> Still, privacy experts say an important point to keep in mind, especially
> since most of these sites are free right now, is that privacy policies can
> change, for example, when a company changes its business model, is bought
> by another entity or files for bankruptcy. “Free services sometimes evolve
> into very marketing-driven services,” says Stephen Keating, executive
> director of the Privacy Foundation in Denver.
>
> Write to Jennifer Saranow at jennifer.saranow@wsj.com
>
> Updated October 30, 2003
