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Social Network Users Have Ruined Their Privacy
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Dec 26, 2006 08:28 AM
from the putting-it-all-out-there dept.
from the putting-it-all-out-there dept.
Steve Kerrison writes "'There's little point in worrying about ID cards, RFID tags and spyware when more and more people are throwing away their privacy anyway. And the potential consequences are dire.' I've written an article on the dangers of social networks and how many users seem to forget just how public the information they post can be. This follows a warning sent out by the CS department of Bristol University, advising students that they risk lost job opportunities, getting in trouble with their parents and more, if they don't take care. The warning, however, really applies to all social network users, be they college students or over-zealous blog posters."
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Keep in mind (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Keep in mind (Score:4, Interesting)
That's true - unless social networking is being set up as a sort of honey trap encouraging people to compromise their futures. Hence, I would not stress this difference as a dichotomy - but rather as two moments of the same phenomenon.
People are giving away their freedom within a now-corporate framework that encourages this kind of activity. Just remember that.
As with fidelity/client cards, purchase-rewards, and fast-tracking at airports, the web 2.0 is training us to surrender our personal lives for the most meager of rewards. This kind of surrender almost seems propaedeutic for a greater, involuntary loss of privacy. But then again, Americans have already lost their freedom to credit reports.
Parent
Privacy sucks. (Score:3, Informative)
Stop hiding in the shadows. Step into the
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Privacy is simply what I want to keep quiet, for better or for worse.
But even if I accept that you expand the realm of the secret beyond dirty secrets, your attitude
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There's no there there (Score:4, Insightful)
News flash: If you say dumb things on the Internet, someone might notice.
How this constitutes a hazard unique to "social networks" is neither explained nor hinted at.
The article presents a non-issue wrapped in snark and hype.
Re:There's no there there (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Leakage (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, it's quite a lot worse than that. It's quite easy for things on your computer that you consider "hidden" to become public knowledge.
For example, I've had many discussions with people over ways to hide things online, so that you can access them if you know the URL, but the URL can't be found by any method other than guessing. The best-know is hiding stuff behind an index.html file, b
Dire, I tell you, dire (Score:5, Insightful)
While the consequences may be as dire as you claim, this is not certain. Even if true, it may still be rational for people to tell all on the web.
In the mid nineties a friend of mine who was putting a game-theory heavy education to work as a top notch security consultant claimed that we had passed a phase boundary and that privacy was essentially dead. At which point he started "living publicly," doing things like making his daily schedule (in detail) available to the world, sending all his receipts (for everything) to the IRS,etc.
When challenged on this rather odd behavior, and asked what he was trying to prove and to whom, he replied that he wasn't trying to prove anything to anyone except perhaps himself. His thinking was that having no privacy isn't nearly as bad as having no privacy and not coming to terms with that fact. He then walked us through a few cases (such as blackmail) and showed whywhen you were better off not getting in the bind of acting as if you had secrets when in fact others knew them.
Perhaps the MySpace people are at least subconsciously reacting in the same way to the growing threats to our privacy--by getting it all out there, so if anyone tries to use it against them they are effectively immunized.
--MarkusQ
Some things you can't immunize yourself from (Score:3, Insightful)
Employers can judge you for any number of reasons. Employers are also looking for any reason to filter you out and judge you
Feeding a troll, I fear (Score:3, Interesting)
Ignoring, more or less, your pugnacious tone, your argument seems to boil down to the claim that revealing passwords, PINs, etc., or things (such as your SSN) that are effectively used as such, is somehow equivalent to revealing the sort of personal information (sexual orientation, political affiliation, taste in music, and so on and so forth) that people might reveal on MySpace. And further, you somehow assume that anyone who does things that I won't do for you on demand must lack the "ability to reason i
I always tell everyone (Score:3, Insightful)
The web is public, that's just how it goes. Don't put personal information on it that you don't want the public to see, and yes your mom is part of the public.
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A bunch of dumb exhibitionists get exposed. (Score:3, Insightful)
I had a friend who put up a simple myspace page, and thought it was anonymous, and was shocked when using just the nick and e-mail she had, i was able to trace it through other pages to get her home address and phone number. Took 3 minutes. People don't think. And no amount of legislation or news stories will change that.
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so? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:so? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
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This is bullshit. (Score:5, Interesting)
It is already happening. The company I work for was founded by two young entrepreneurs that grew up in the age where knowledge was free and they learned that masturbation won't cause hair to grow on your hands or your dick to fall off. They learned that the D.A.R.E. cop that told them the story of the young man who died from ONE hit from a joint was LYING. They realized that nobody else they grew up with believed this horseshit anymore either. They only care about your skill and your work ethic. As the younger generations start to take back this world it will become a better place to live because of the global community and available, simple worldwide communication.
Do not fear it. Embrace it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The company I work for was founded by two young entrepreneurs that grew up in the age where knowledge was free and they learned that masturbation won't cause hair to grow on your hands or your dick to fall off. They learned that the D.A.R.E. cop that told them the story of the young man who died from ONE hit from a joint was LYING. They realized that nobody else they grew up with believed this horseshit anymore either. They only care about your skill and your work ethic. As the younger generations start to take back this world it will become a better place to live because of the global community and available, simple worldwide communication.
I dunno. The guys you are talking about probably grew up in the 60s or 70s, when idealism was very strong. This current generation of young people is scarily conservative, but even worse, they seem to be corporate whores. I wouldn't expect many of them to rock the boat in substantial ways. Sure, they may have their dyed hair, tattoos and their genital piercings, but that's just the new conformity - it doesn't demonstrate actual rebellion or subversion. Even those idealists from the 70s sold themselves out
Lost job opportunities? (Score:2, Insightful)
The only thing that the social networks can change is that previously, you could be an idiot and no one noticed until it was too late. Now, it's easy and fun to make your idiocy known to the world.
I once got a job because someone saw me writing somewhat-smart-type comments on Usenet.
If I had a web design company, I'd hire people who can make their MySpace page have interesting content, look good and pass W3C validation... =)
Change Your Name (Score:5, Insightful)
Downhill after first paragraph (Score:2)
The quote from Bristol uni is sensible and even mildly interesting. After that, it's just another tired rant about blogs (some someone who appears to be using forum software to run his own blog, which doesn't help to convince that he "gets" blogs at all) and various other sites he clearly doesn't like.
Obviously it's a dumb idea to post information you don't want published in public. Sites like MySpace have introduced a lot of newbies to social networking, and they'll take a while to get the hang of it, but
Privacy (Score:2, Insightful)
Things aren't "private" if they're willingly disclosed. Warning people against providing genuine home addresses, or phone numbers, via the internet is, perhaps, valid advice - however, teenagers regularly disclose mobile numbers to people they barely know in "real life" sce
I see this somewhat differently (Score:5, Insightful)
How can one live freely if one must hide behind privacy in order to avoid getting in trouble with various authorities? If one can only be a dissident, contrarian, or black sheep if one hides within the safe confines of one's own skull, is that not what we used to call in oldspeak "oppression"?
I see a bolder way, in living openly, freely, and standing up against those who would punish us for exercise freedoms. To use an easy example, if recreational drug users were a unified voting block, they could take over the country in an election cycle. But because the law makes it dangerous to use drugs recreationally, users are forced to protect themselves with a shield of privacy (which has been steadily eroded by the war on drugs over the years). If everyone would just stand up and openly do what they believed in, they would not be politically isolated and would not be able to be pushed around.
Similarly, the gay rights movement really started picking up steam only after people began coming out of the closet in droves. Privacy protected them, but it also contained and enslaved them. By stepping out into the public realm, they have forced society to deal with them, and through the necessary struggles that are still ongoing, have found increasing acceptance in our culture.
It's true that if you are a fool, and do stupid things, and people find out about it, your life will become more difficult. But there is a difference between foolishness and good people standing up in order to live the lives they wish to choose. Let the fools of the world weed themselves out of the breeding population, but let oppressors and would-be oppressors everywhere quake at the thought of a brave world of proud, public freedom-weilding citizens who are unashamed to let the world see their lives in a warts-and-all nakedness, which really is more beautiful than the idealized, airbrushed nakedness once you realize that the latter is a hollow lie, and that truth is the only substance out of which we build our lives.
An example (Score:3, Interesting)
But reading the quote, one wonders who is this Andrew Jallon guy. Well, a quick google and you can see check out his discus and shotput attempts (not very good). PUBLIC real-estate tax records give a strong implication as to where he lives. And finally, Andrew Jallon's bigoted comments end up on Slashdot. Did he expect this? Should he have expected it. Should we all be paranoid about every post...lest someone take it and run?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You never had privacy (Score:4, Insightful)
BIG difference! (Score:3, Insightful)
The key difference here is whether the person wants to give up his or her privacy. It's their decision. I'm a firm believer in personal freedom, and if someone wants to hold their naked butt into the webcam, together with their phone# and address, it's their decision.
Today, more and more decisions are taken out of our hands to "protect us". I don't want to be protected. I want to be free. Freedom of choice is what makes us human. That's one of the few things I agree with with the bible boys. After all, according to them Adam ate from the tree of knowledge and thus we're forced to choose between good and evil.
I kinda don't want to revert that.
Let them choose. Inform them of the implications, but the choice is theirs.
Stupid people won't learn. (Score:3, Informative)
Had a young gentleman put in an application at work last month. Looked sharp! Sounded sharp! Folks everywhere were all sorts of happy.
Unfortunately, the officer doing the background checks put the applicants name into Google and came up with his MySpace account.
Tip for the Wise: if you're going to apply at a Law Enforcement agency, take the paean to the Mighty Marijuana Plant off your MySpace page, along with the albums dedicated to photos of you imbibing the Wonder Weed in various
The gain outweights the risks (Score:3, Insightful)
What we're seeing is the tipping point at which the risks of giving up some kinds of privacy are overcome by the undeniable power of the network to create and maintain social circles (and all of the advantages that they confer) by uniting like-thinking folks at a rate never before seen.
I like what xkcd has to say on this subject. (Score:3, Interesting)
A prime example (Score:3, Informative)
On his own private MySpace, he described the town as a "shithole". Somehow (mostly because it's one of those towns where everyone knows everyone else offline and online) this myspace entry got passed around and eventually quoted in the local newspaper. He subsequently received death threats from residents, caused a massive public outcry and got sent back to his hometown to be "dealt with internally" (presumably, lost his job.) Even though these were his own personal opinions on his own personal MySpace, those were the consequences.
It wasn't just him hurt - the general public being as stupid as they always are, they chose to harass other employees from the same shop who had nothing to do with his views and didn't necessarily agree.
One could easily argue that said town *is* a shithole, especially given the retarded way that its residents responded to what was a personal opinion on a social networking site that had nothing to do with the person professionally or his company. But in case anyone traces me back too (extremely trivial, I've given my website) - no, I'm not saying that it is
The lesson? I don't know. I guess it would be - lifestyle choices, getting drunk etc really shouldn't be a major problem. Everyone acts stupidly now and again. But think extremely carefully before you openly slag off other people or places online because without the appropriate care it has a good chance of getting back to them and you will suffer the consequences. By all means call the town you work in a shithole, but for goodness sake do it using a screen name on a site where you can't easily be traced back to yourself as an individual. The more sensitive the comment, the more precautions you should put in place.
For the ultimate protection, never ever under any circumstances say anything that you don't want the entire world to hear and misinterpret. Now, that's practically impossible (I try to keep my personal website as close to that as possible though, and just a couple of weeks ago my interviewer commented on my weblog in the interview itself - I knew this was always likely due to the email address I use. It was positive. I got the job.) It's about weighing up the risks and whether you are prepared for the worst case scenario. If fragments of my previous paragraph got quoted (out of context) in the same paper, I'd be looking at similar problems - however given how late I am in posting a comment to this discussion, how few non-nerds bother to read Slashdot let alone the comments etc, I have made that calculated risk. In that worst case scenario, I'm ready to reply to the newspaper and point them to the full comment and make any necessary clarifications.
The bottom line is that it's all about judgement. You should think about how your comment can be taken by different people, what the consequences would be, what the likelihood of that comment being used against you actually *is* and either don't make the comment in the first place or take a *calculated* risk. Not just go spouting anything and everything on the most public site on the internet. Kids are not so good at making those judgements, but then nobody should be having a go at you later in life for something that you wrote when you were 13 anyway. I'm talking about adults here.
Re:Social Networking is a dangerous idea (Score:5, Insightful)
With the parents, of course. Adults control the world children live in, right? Once your kids are adults
(and the transition to adulthood starts around age 8, earlier for the smart ones), if you haven't taught
them basic common sense (not common whatsoever IMO), then it's on you. We're supposed to limit
the ability of people to communicate with one another? Communication is, after all, what you make of it.
Maxim
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It's called common sense. There should be no safeguards. If you're stupid enough to blab to the world about drunken panty raids then you deserve the consequences. As for the sexual predator thing, well, you have to educate your children about the danger and make sure they never meet anyone from the internet in real life without some heavy digging and never by themselves. Besides, the person they are meeting will probably have this same issue about privacy so you can find out
Re:Social Networking is a dangerous idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Might as well ask where the safeguards are at your local high school...The opportunities for trouble there are way the hell greater than on MySpace or similar.
The concern for privacy, however is much more real. You don't have to show your tits to be compromising yourself to future employers and current school administrators. I wish like hell I'd never started posting under my own name...I ought to change it, but Satanicpuppy has such a nice ring...
Parent
Re:Social Networking is a dangerous idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Good grief we live in a culture of fear... How many young people have been damaged on Myspace? I know a few teens that spend lots of hours on the site, and I must say, they are pretty normal. But you know if one girl gets abducted out of the gazillion like her that are registered on Myspace it will be bloody HEADLINE NEWS!!!! How long have we had these stories of the big bad Internet? I feel like the producers at (major cable news network) are just hoping that there will be some sort of weird sexual predator mania with a million victims across the USA that propagates from the dark corners of Myspace just so they can say, "I told you so!"
The young people on this country that are in trouble are from impoverished households, have abusive parents or suffered some real life trauma that did not involve a website. They have problems not because of myspace.
Yea, spending your life on-line gabbing is probably not healthy, obviously, but relax folks. Tech-savvy, pop culture suburbanite kids are not the troubled delinquents of society.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Social Networking is a dangerous idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Social networking adds nothing new to the World, it just makes it easier to see it. Which is a good thing. (I'm willing to except, rather than accept, MySpace as a good thing though, just from the tech pov.)
Ok, I'm a pornographer and biased. Freedom of speech is still the most important thing on Earth, social networking is an important aspect of that, so please don't spoil it with some foxnews-fud-fuelled family values jihad. Predators make good cheap easy copy, but they are far more dangerous in a shopping mall than they are online.
The irony of Fox News spouting fud about MySpace while being part of the self same organization that owns it is not lost on me. Nor is the fact that other networks will spout fud about MySpace for reasons of competition.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
My point, though, is that if the children learn a basic framework for what is and isn't a good idea, the parents don't have to teach them individual applications wi
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember before there were consumer protection laws, and if you bought a defective car, too bad sucker. That was the way for years. Am I going to argue that all safeguards are an infringement? No. Am I going to argue that we're figuring it out? Yes.
Please don't apply simple "take personal responsibility for the fact the world sucks and hates you" rules. We can make it better, but we have to know what's wrong first.
It's nice once
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On the internet, no one should know you're a teenager.
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Strange. When I seek for jobs I worry much more about employers not knowing me enough rather than they know me too much. And no employer will be bored enough to actually read every message in your blog to find your "most silly moment" before he decides whether to hire you.
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I see your point, but like I said in TFA, if somebody can write a script to seek out predators on myspace, so too can somebody write a script to profile somebody based on their social networking posting, saving them the trouble of reading the boring (i.e. most) bits.
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Right now, there is only one site that I know of that archives+republishes old web pages on a large scale: the Internet Archive. Google News and a few other sites do it for USENET. It is neither possible nor desirable to prevent the archiving part, but it is easy and simple to put restrictions on wholesale republishing, and to enforce them.
If you cannot stand behind what you're willing to say in public then don't say it.
No, I'm not willing to have every word I ev