Social Network Users Have Ruined Their Privacy 308
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."
Keep in mind (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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
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.
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
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.
so? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Social Networking is a dangerous idea (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 a lot about them. Anyway, I know others are going to say this. It is not myspace's responsibility. It is the user or the user's guardian that is ultimately responsible.
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... =)
Re:There's no there there (Score:4, Insightful)
Change Your Name (Score:5, Insightful)
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" scenarios, and there's as much chance of something happening in that kind of situation as there is in an electronically-based one.
I believe that these concerns are just left over from an ageing population that doesn't really trust modern technology, or thinks that anything besides face-to-face communication is unnatural. I'm sure people once thought this about telephones, too.
Re:I always tell everyone (Score:3, Insightful)
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...
The New York Times (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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.
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.
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 even before you can prove to them that you'd be a great employee. I don't like the fact that employers judge me because I have a socially and politically charged blog of my own, but I must come to terms with that by hiding it from them so they can't use that against me.
People make bad judgements for stupid reasons, and make stupid decisions based on those bad judgements. Those decisions affect people's lives. The fear of you or your family not being able to survive is a great motivating factor to not post intimate details of your life online for everyone to see. If you must, keep it anonymous.
Society isn't open because there are too many closed minds. There is then no other choice but to hide information that close minds should not see. The last thing I need is my son or my job taken away from me because of some idiot reading something I posted which has nothing to do with either my work ethic or my ability as a parent.
Re:This is bullshit. (Score:2, Insightful)
This statement has been proven wrong so many times. The people frmo younger generations think they can do it so much better, but in the end the are still human and most of them lose their ideals when they get families and things are getting tough. And it will get tough one day... and the change of heart then seems to help them out in so many other fields that they'd rather not be so idealistic anymore, but rather take care of their families.
I just believe that the evolution of mankind isn't going so fast, that humans become completely different beings in just a few generations. And as long as we are human, we will be freakishly religious... even the ones that think they are not (they just don't see it, because it all seems so normal to think like that)
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.
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.
Re:Social Networking is a dangerous idea (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 within the framework.
Its Human Physc (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Social Networking is a dangerous idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is bullshit. (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, because the WWII generation certainly didn't step up help the world, and those hippie civil rights activists (in the US) didn't do nothin' fer nobody.
In case you didn't know, every younger generation has all the answers to fix all the problems of the world. Generation Noobs, your generation, is apparently going to fix the problems with torrents, blogs, and 2 minute videos.
Personally, as a Gen-X-er, I'm happy with being disenfranchised and disillusioned.
Re:Social Networking is a dangerous idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Social Networking is a dangerous idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Aside from your "sexual predators" comment (there are no more sexual preditors on the internet than any other form of social gathering or communications), all those other problems are due to self righteous bastards who should minde their own business.
When a person hires an employee, it should only matter that they will show up on time, do their job, and not cause problems in the workplace--like harrassing people because they don't follow a "one true religion" and such. And excluding someone from a job because they appear naked somewhere on the internet or even in pr0n, is doing exactly that. Beleiving it is wrong to be naked or have sex is a religious edict, nothing more. The manager who makes decisions based upon people's personal lives should not be hired. They are there to make the company run smoothly, not to try and enforce their moralistic beliefs on others.
I used to live in a place where the majority was a particular religion. They would constantly complain about perceived wrongs against people of their faith, yet they would be prejudice against everyone else. And if you looked into where they were "wronged" you would find out the people attacking them were really just defending themselves or retailiating against some really evil thing the "one true followers" did. They got to the point where the military had to be called in, and they'll mention how the government sent troops, but they'll leave out the fact they murdered nearly a hundred people including smashing in the heads of babies. Do you think it is right to smash in the heads of babies just because they weren't born into the "one true religion"???
If you didn't go to their church, they would not only refuse to be your friend, they would tell lies about you behind your back and do everything they could think of to screw you. They want to kill you, but they are afraid of the government, so they just do everything else they can think of. Just try holding down a job when after the wrong person/people find out you don't go to the "one true" church, they do everything they can think to either get you fired or make you quit. The others go along with it because they believe it is the right way to act, but they are to afraid to start things on their own.
Re:Privacy sucks. (Score:3, Insightful)
But even if I accept that you expand the realm of the secret beyond dirty secrets, your attitude of embracing a totally open lifestyle is about as likely to succeed as the last century's attempt to socialize the means of production. People want to be different, and secrets, like capital, are a big part of that.
In fact, as I suggested in my original post, those who benefit the most from the newly-open lifestyle are corporations and our ever-increasing security apparat (especially that of the UK and USA). These, of course, live in the shadows. Shining ever more light on our own lives will never lead to more light being shone upon theirs.
Finally, of course I have a choice. Europe has sued SWIFT for vomiting up my banking data to the bloody Yanks. I can avoid the UK and USA, including their airlines. I can avoid social networks, or use them wisely. Total privacy is impossible - I agree. But I can still remain off the grid to a surprisingly large extent. It is a question of choice, and sacrifice (to some extent). It is not fatalism.
Re:archiving+republishing questionable (Score:3, Insightful)
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 ever said available for quoting out of context. If you don't understand why, then you don't understand how conversations, debate, and free speech work.
I used to use nynms based on my real name. Having a stable career and a family to think of changed my mind on that score.
And that's precisely why we should think about stopping republishing of archived materials in the way that the Internet Archive is doing.
I most certainly won't count on copyright law or any other sort of law to prevent that from happening.
These are not black-and-white issues; restricting sites like the Internet Archive and Google News would not give you complete protection, but they would permit people to participate in discussions significantly more openly.
Re:Social Networking is a dangerous idea (Score:2, Insightful)