Privacy is Dead and Facebook Killed It
Well, blaming Facebook is perhaps not fair, but it is a catchy title. Privacy advocates have long been concerned about the gradual erosion of our privacy by shadowy government and private programs (Fly Buys anyone?) but now they're getting more concerned about the information we're actually willing to hand out. Services like Facebook and MySpace are just the tip of the iceberg here.
People are willing to share an extraordinary amount of information about themselves online. Social networking sites are all the rage and people put everything from photos to their relationship status up on them. They're a stalker's wet dream. Where it gets even scarier though is the 'overshare'. We've all seen it, that awkward moment in a group conversation when someone tells you something you probably could have done without knowing. The Internet makes this even worse though. Google a friend's name or email address looking for info about them (what was their website again?) and you may get more than you bargained for. If you search for the right one of my email addresses you'll find that I maintain a port for FreeBSD. It's useless information, but it demonstrates the point. By gradually stringing bits of this information together you can build a very complete picture of information you either didn't care about, or might have preferred not to know.
There's a saying among computer techies that once something goes onto the Internet it's never coming back. People often don't think about the various web-spiders, archives, search engines etc. that might be making all sorts of copies of the information they're putting out there. This lack of awareness can lead to all sorts of interesting situations. I found this out first hand when I tried to extricate an email address of mine from any web sites in an attempt to cut down the spam it was receiving. I removed it everywhere, or at least everywhere I had control of, but years later it still lives on in the indexes and caches of search engines everywhere and the poorly maintained mirror sites of a thousand FTP servers.
Twitter is a prime example of how we are willingly breaking the privacy barrier for little gain. The idea that someone wants to read a sort of micro-blog of our every move (something like this) is farcical. And yet it (and Facebook's similar Status Updates) seem to have a sort of lure that is impossible to resist.
However, for the ultimate example of this phenomenon you just can't go past Locatik. Using a small piece of software loaded onto your GPS-enabled phone, it updates a map on the web with your location to within metres every few minutes. Allowing your friends, family, suspicious spouse or overbearing manager to keep tabs on your position 24/7. Apple's iPhone also has a similar app to do this. It blew my mind that Apple was plugging this as a fantastic piece of software and a great application for their phone.
So why am I whining about all this at 1am on a Saturday morning? I'm really not sure. Possibly because a few days ago I stumbled across something I could have done without knowing. Possibly just because I've been bouncing around the ideas of our changing expectations of privacy for a while. Possibly because I've just read The Light of Other Days again, a novel that explores the idea of a total loss of privacy through invisible surveillance of anyone, by anyone, at anytime. I think in conclusion, my feeling is that while I marvel at the Internet from a technical point of view, I still find myself uncomfortable with a lot of its social implications. It's still an experiment, we're not bound by what it is doing or what it expects us to do, but we often forget that.
People are willing to share an extraordinary amount of information about themselves online. Social networking sites are all the rage and people put everything from photos to their relationship status up on them. They're a stalker's wet dream. Where it gets even scarier though is the 'overshare'. We've all seen it, that awkward moment in a group conversation when someone tells you something you probably could have done without knowing. The Internet makes this even worse though. Google a friend's name or email address looking for info about them (what was their website again?) and you may get more than you bargained for. If you search for the right one of my email addresses you'll find that I maintain a port for FreeBSD. It's useless information, but it demonstrates the point. By gradually stringing bits of this information together you can build a very complete picture of information you either didn't care about, or might have preferred not to know.
There's a saying among computer techies that once something goes onto the Internet it's never coming back. People often don't think about the various web-spiders, archives, search engines etc. that might be making all sorts of copies of the information they're putting out there. This lack of awareness can lead to all sorts of interesting situations. I found this out first hand when I tried to extricate an email address of mine from any web sites in an attempt to cut down the spam it was receiving. I removed it everywhere, or at least everywhere I had control of, but years later it still lives on in the indexes and caches of search engines everywhere and the poorly maintained mirror sites of a thousand FTP servers.
Twitter is a prime example of how we are willingly breaking the privacy barrier for little gain. The idea that someone wants to read a sort of micro-blog of our every move (something like this) is farcical. And yet it (and Facebook's similar Status Updates) seem to have a sort of lure that is impossible to resist.
However, for the ultimate example of this phenomenon you just can't go past Locatik. Using a small piece of software loaded onto your GPS-enabled phone, it updates a map on the web with your location to within metres every few minutes. Allowing your friends, family, suspicious spouse or overbearing manager to keep tabs on your position 24/7. Apple's iPhone also has a similar app to do this. It blew my mind that Apple was plugging this as a fantastic piece of software and a great application for their phone.
So why am I whining about all this at 1am on a Saturday morning? I'm really not sure. Possibly because a few days ago I stumbled across something I could have done without knowing. Possibly just because I've been bouncing around the ideas of our changing expectations of privacy for a while. Possibly because I've just read The Light of Other Days again, a novel that explores the idea of a total loss of privacy through invisible surveillance of anyone, by anyone, at anytime. I think in conclusion, my feeling is that while I marvel at the Internet from a technical point of view, I still find myself uncomfortable with a lot of its social implications. It's still an experiment, we're not bound by what it is doing or what it expects us to do, but we often forget that.