Netflix Sued For Privacy Invasion 262
We've discussed the Netflix Prize numerous times as the contest ran, including the news two years ago that the anonymity of the dataset had been broken. Now reader azoblue sends in this excerpt from Wired: "An in-the-closet lesbian mother is suing Netflix for privacy invasion, alleging the movie rental company made it possible for her to be outed when it disclosed insufficiently anonymous information about nearly half-a-million customers as part of its $1 million contest to improve its recommendation system. ... The lead attorney on the new suit, Joseph Malley, recently reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with Facebook over its failed Beacon program, which drew fire in part for sharing users’ Blockbuster rentals with their friends. ... If a data set reveals a person's ZIP code, birthdate and gender, there's an 87 percent chance that the person can be uniquely identified." The suit turns on the question of whether Netflix should have known that their dataset's anonymity could be broken, two years before researchers demonstrated that.
So lemme get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
... this woman is a closeted lesbian. She came to the realization that, if someone hypothetical person were to come along and get into the NetFlix user data system, he could find out she's a lesbian. In order to protect herself from being potentially exposed, she decided to join a high-profile national lawsuit, charging that they had created a potential for people to find out her sexual preferences. How many days do you think it'll be before her picture is all over the web, sitting right next to the headline "formerly closeted lesbian pulled out of closet by attaching her name and face to a privacy lawsuit"?
Re:So lemme get this straight... (Score:4, Insightful)
Right. And of course the real names of people who file anonymously NEVER get out.
Outed by movie rentals? (Score:5, Insightful)
"The member’s movie data exposes a Netflix member’s personal interest and/or struggles with various highly personal issues, including sexuality, mental illness, recovery from alcoholism, and victimization from incest, physical abuse, domestic violence, adultery, and rape."
Isn't this a bit of a stretch. I've rented a rather broad range of films, over the past year some of the films I have watched include Apt Pupil, Lords of Dogtown, Girl Interrupted, A History of violence, A Beautiful Mind, Brokeback Mountain and Super High Me. Evidently I'm a mentally disturbed,abusive, homosexual, drug abusing, skateboarding, autistic nazi and didn't know it.
The woman who was outed wasn't outed by her movie choices but by her paranoia leading to her own disclosure.
Um... (Score:3, Insightful)
If a data set reveals a person's ZIP code, birthdate and gender, there's an 87 percent chance that the person can be uniquely identified
What idiot answers all those questions correctly?
Re:netflix tracks birthdates? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So lemme get this straight... (Score:2, Insightful)
Netflix shows what you watch to others that are your "Netflix friends". It's a minor social network that allows you to pass recommendations to others. If they're really snoopy they can see what you watch...but there's also an option to cut that off that's about five clicks deep in the settings.
So, if all you do is rent skinimax flicks. Yeah, I could see feeling exposed...but honestly, I don't think it's a big deal.
If privacy is such a big deal to people, they need to get informed. End of story. You can't half-ass privacy. Either bury your identity or deal with the fact that if you put it out there...it's out there.
Don't you need to have actual damages? (Score:3, Insightful)
The way that I thought that it worked was that you sue in civil court when you actuall suffer damages even when the other party was doing something illegal.
For instance, you can't sue a drunk driver for almost hitting your car. You could press that they did something illegal and have him charged in criminal court, but there's no payday in that. Given that these types of cases seem to be this lawyer's modus operandi, I'm thinking that this case is more about the payday and not about building stronger standards for privacy.
Stop giving out personal info that isn't needed (Score:4, Insightful)
Why are you giving Netflix your birthdate and gender in the first place? I never give those things to companies, and if I can't avoid it (forced to enter something when signing up) I give bogus information. Neither of those are any of Netflix's business.
Re:Outed by movie rentals? (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems a little far-fetched.
Also, the summary is poorly written because it makes it seem like the Zipcodes and Birthdays have been released when they haven't. http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2009/12/doe-v-netflix.pdf [wired.com]
http://it.slashdot.org/story/07/11/27/1334244/Anonymity-of-Netflix-Prize-Dataset-Broken [slashdot.org] Shows that it's possible, but it's not like anyone could draw a conclusion on Sexuality with any certainty by those means.
Also, after reading the article it seems like they HAVEN'T released Birthdays and Zip Codes but that this is only planned for the second iteration. They only had unique ids for users and ratings... The privacy was breached by people datamining other resources. From what I gathered... the people got the identities of people by matching ratings with IMDB ratings... Which in that case I don't think Netflix really provides any more information about someone than they have already made public via IMDB.
Re:So lemme get this straight... (Score:1, Insightful)
anyone filling a Jane/John Doe lawsuit has to expect their name would eventually become public information.
Exactly. So she's just come out on her own... in order to sue someone for the potential that someone going through their data MIGHT be able to figure out that she's a lesbian.
My point is still the same... she's given up on her privacy in order to sue someone for a potential (but not yet real) breach of privacy.
No, she sued for money
The closet can be a scary, stupid place (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking as a gay guy with a lot of gay and lesbian friends, I can tell you that some people get really worked up over being "in the closet". They can start to worry about really stupid things that are outside of the bounds of possibility, and work themselves into all kinds of trouble.
Case in point: a friend of mine got herself fired over this. She knew that her supervisor didn't like gay people and so she was in the closet, as far as work was concerned. She got called up for jury duty. The court case didn't last long at all, but in the meantime, one of our mutual friends' father passed away. So, my friend was invited to the funeral which happened to fall on the day after her jury duty ended. She was so worked up over the idea that her boss would figure out that she's a lesbian if she took a personal day to go to her gay friend's dad's funeral that she lied and told her boss that she was still on jury duty for the day of the funeral. Well, the boss didn't like her and he called the court clerk to confirm that she was still on jury duty - and then fired her for lying about it.
Had she just took a personal day and said "I'm going to the funeral of a friend's dad" nothing would have happened. As far as I know, there's no mechanism by which you can figure out if the relatives of a dead person (whose name you don't have) are gay or not.
Maybe this lawsuit lady should read up on the Streisand Effect (you know her name's going to come out eventually), stop worrying so much about what other people think about her sexual orientation, and concentrate on living her life. Can she truly be deluded enough to think that anyone in her life (work, social, government or otherwise) is going to trawl netflix's database to figure out if she's a lesbian and then use that information against her?
Seriously, this is like when my boss didn't want to have his pay directly deposited because he thought the payroll company could snoop in his bank account. It's just not grounded in reality.
Re:Filing as Jane Doe? (Score:5, Insightful)
no. Being a lesbian does not mean she cheated on her husband, even if she is still married. For example, this is slashdot, I believe there are a lot of heterosexual men here who have never even touched a woman.
Re:netflix tracks birthdates? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So lemme get this straight... (Score:1, Insightful)
More to the point, what data does Netflix have on you that reveals you to be a closed lesbian? I don't recall seeing a "Are you a closet homosexual?" button when I signed up for my account.
More to the point, is she a hot lesbian?
Re:Filing as Jane Doe? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So lemme get this straight... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So lemme get this straight... (Score:4, Insightful)
My point is still the same... she's given up on her privacy in order to sue someone for a potential (but not yet real) breach of privacy.
It's a catch-22, no doubt, but at least this way she can possibly force Netflix to fix the initial problem.
She chose to be proactive, rather than sit and worry. Can't fault her for that. Besides, it is hardly a forgone conclusion that she will be revealed as the Jane Doe in a reasonable time frame.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is most people don't think, and those that do, don't think about what they're doing from a security standpoint. "Will this work?" or "Will this be safe?" is vastly different from "Can this be abused?" or even "Is all of this really necessary?"
Re:Filing as Jane Doe? (Score:1, Insightful)
Not everyone is as broad minded as big city folks.
Nor is everyone as small minded as big city folks who, for all their self-proclaimed open-mindedness, are often anything but.
Re:Filing as Jane Doe? (Score:2, Insightful)
While I don't agree with the leap, I think I can kinda see where they got the idea. She prefers chicks and doesn't want anyone to know. Because she doesn't want anyone to know, she obviously has done something wrong, etc.
It is all a load of hogwash. That's the same logic that comes to the conclusion that if you use an envelope to mail something, you must be doing something wrong.