Privacy in the new decade

// January 10th, 2010 // social media

Social media and the openness of sharing is bringing us all closer together, and putting our relationships and actions in the forefront. The question is, where are we going with all this? Have we had a better or worse experience with this transparency, and what will it mean to our privacy in the new decade?

2009 has been plagued by security and privacy concerns, from Facebook’s Terms of Use scandal and its recent privacy settings changes, to applications built on the Facebook platform that abused user information, and exposed email, username’s and password a la RockYou. Social API’s have allowed for amazing things in the past couple of years, but has also seen some wide spread abuse of what can done with them. Social media advertising companies using your demographic information and photos to target your friends for more clicks has been rampant and Facebook has taken action. There have also been many applications that done worse. As a developer on Facebook, I am sometimes surprised at what can be done with the information available to me, when user’s click on the accept button and hand me their life on a silver platter.

User’s have been too free with their information which got them in hot water every so often. Accepting all those apps is fun, and one hell of a time waster when you need one, but you never know who the developers are, and what are they doing with your information. Even though application invites are a thing of the past, and almost no one accepts them anymore, developers have been crafty to get users to add their latest fun quiz or personality test.

The worst part is that users are too free with their information between themselves, and the public. They try setting their privacy and closing their profiles, but even if users did heighten their privacy settings to their most paranoidlevels, it seems like it still doesn’t take much to expose their details. A study by the security company Sophos, revealed that users accepted friend invites on Facebook from people they didn’t know all too often. And all too often its being taken advantage of by not just advertisers and developers.

Companies are exploiting people’s openness with their information for their own purposes. The case of the Quebec woman suffering from depression who got her health insurance payments stopped because she posted photos of herself on the beach and in a party. Her doctors recommended she take some time off and try to have a good time to help her depression. Her insurance company was investigating her, and managed to get within a few degrees of separation in her social graph, to see what she’s been up to,

How do I protect my privacy?

So what now? What do we do? Well for one, be a little more careful with our information. Here are some tips:

Don’t accept random friend requests from people you don’t know, or dont have an association with you. Check their mutual friends list.
Sensitive information can be used for identity theft. Set your security settings to not display your email address, date of birth, home town and phone numbers publicly.
Hide information from friends of friends, because you never know who your friends are friends with!
Created lists that have different privacy levels. There is some information, photos, videos of yourself you want to show your friends, but not your co-workers or boss. Or just don’t post them on social media networks at all.

Sophos has a great video that explains what Facebook’s new privacy settings mean, and how to go about insuring your saftey.

If thats all not enough, and all this has you freaked out, well you can try and remove yourself completely from social networks using a service called Web 2.0 Suicide Machine. The site lets you purge all your connections, friendships as well as photos, videos and identity from Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and Linkedin. Check out the video for more details.

Note: Web 2.0 Suicide Machine has recently been blocked by Facebook and slapped it with a Cease and Desist letter,

“kindly asking us to stop our service and remove all Facebook profile pictures we collected for the memorial pages and anything else which could be associated with Facebook from our website”

At the end of the day, it wise to know that privacy is something that one needs to take on actively, and be aware of its implications, not just you, but for everyone around you. Lots of research has been conducted recently on the subject privacy and its impact on our behaviours, and its implications on people around us.

What do you think of the matter? How do you protect your privacy on social networks and online communities?