Internet “Privacy” Doesn’t Exist
At least, not the way we assume it does.
I follow a psychologist on Twitter. Dr. Kolmes is fascinated with social media and how it impacts her clients and her profession, and her views on the professional ethics of using Twitter and social networking impressed me enough that I hit the “follow” button. And I haven’t regretted it–she posts links to papers and articles that make me think about things I haven’t before.
Like, for example, this article on how social networking sites impact the idea of privacy as we know it, and just how easy it is for predators and marketers to get hold of personal information if people insist on putting it on Facebook. Or MySpace. Or what-have-you.
Research conducted by Alessandro Acquisti, a Carnegie Mellon University professor of public policy and management who also spoke at the conference, has found that individuals’ notions of privacy are malleable depending on the context of an interaction. According to Acquisti, people are more likely to divulge key personal information — their photo, birthday, hometown, address and phone number — on social networking sites than they would on other web sites. His 2005 study highlighted privacy concerns such as online and physical stalking.
“People [say] privacy [is] important to them, yet they engage in behaviors that indicate a remarkable lack of concern,” Acquisti told the conference participants. “Privacy decision making and valuations are malleable,” but it’s unclear what factors lead to more disclosure. One of those factors might be a “herding effect,” he said. In one study, Acquisti found that that people will divulge information when they see others doing so. That tendency, he believes, may explain why so many people are willing to dish out personal information on the networks. (from article)
This hits on the other part of it–something I was talking about last Friday. I have Facebook and MySpace and Goodreads (oh my) pages for my readers, yes. So there’s a certain amount of my personal self that I have to make the decision about letting my readers see. But it’s not just readers who are going to have access to that information. You put it out there on someone else’s server, and you’re trusting the server company, the social networking company, and THEN you’re trusting everyone you “friend.” None of these things are private in the accepted senses of the word.
The Internet is public, but we pretend it isn’t sometimes. That pretense can be actively harmful when a predator finds an Internet watering-hole and settles down to wait.
One last chunk from that article:
Hill says a person’s pattern of behavior on various networks can reveal tell-tale signatures, similar to fingerprints — or perhaps “friendprints” — that can be used to solve a wide range of business challenges, from targeted marketing and advertising to fraud detection.
The study, titled “Building an Effective Representation for Dynamic Networks,” originated as an approach to fraud in the telecommunications industry. The authors were interested in the problem of identifying phone service subscribers who repeatedly default on their bills by signing up for service under an alias. The problem is not new. However, the focus of the paper was to show how to clearly identify a customer’s social network signature and match it to signatures created by customers who had previously defaulted. “Repetitive defaulters may be identified despite their aliases over time by their ‘social network signature,’” according to the paper. (from article)
Just sit back and think about that for a second. This doesn’t just mean people who don’t pay their phone bill can be tracked. This means YOU can be tracked. Even if you don’t do anything “wrong,” the capability to track YOU down is still there. Who is going to use that capability? For what ends? How is that capability overseen by the social networks, are there guards in place to stop unethical usage?
It’s simple. There just aren’t.
People treat social networks like their friend networks out here in the real world (I almost said “meatspace”), where the tools of human perception and human cooperation evolved over thousands of years keep things (mostly) on an even keel. Networks on social-networking sites do not have a lot of the consequences meatspace (oh, what the hell) friend networks have, like shunning or instant reaction to someone’s bad behavior. It’s a recipe for disaster, and there’s all sorts of personal information floating out there to be taken advantage of.
I don’t point this out to sound alarmist. I do, however, think that a lot of authors should think long and hard about social networking sites and blogs, and decide just what they want out there in the vast public petri dish of the Internet. I also think people are going to be shocked when it becomes obvious how intrusive social networks have the potential of being, especially when their users take a certain amount of privacy for granted and yet give up highly valuable personal information at a moment’s notice.
Privacy on the Internet is mostly in your own hands. But a lot of people don’t think about it. Like sex, they just assume they’re safe. The consequences might not be as dire on the Internet as they are in bed, but is that any reason not to take precautions?
Related posts:
June 17th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
It alarms me to no end when people fill out those “memes” with their middle names, pet names, streets they were born on, and a slew of other answers to what are fairly typical security questions for things like their online banking and credit card services, as well as when they post pictures of their children.
Call me a paranoid alarmist if you must, but if I can see the exploitation potential, so can the sort of people who do the exploiting, and it’s foolish to make it easier for them than it already is.
June 17th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
The only way to be truly private in our modern world is to withdraw from it. Find a little cabin deep in the woods. Even then, you’ll likely have the occasional park ranger or hiker stopping by.
However, the real issue is people thoughtlessly posting chatter that gives away information they really don’t want known. Like the man recently who blamed Twitter that his house was broken in to while he was on vacation. Sorry, toots, you were dumb enough to tell the world you were leaving, which is one of the basic no-nos on any level. Like not stopping the newspaper so they pile up on the doorstep. Duh.
And Kerry’s right as well–just because a site asks for a profile doesn’t mean you have to make a full confession. If your goal is to touch base with people from the past, a few significant items should be more than sufficient.
That said, it would behoove social network sites to include warnings at ever stage of the registration process about not giving out too much personal information. Given there are still tens of millions of Windows users who have no idea they should be using virus protection, assuming people signing up for social media will remember on their own is a bit overly optimistic.
June 17th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
It’s just not “us” violating our own privacy on social networks, the government also does a really good job, too.
Got an idea of where someone might live? Well, if they own a house or any real estate, you can look it up in the county clerks records – a lot of which are online now. If you want to get a rough idea of what their income bracket is, look up the appraised value of their home. A lot of places also have the voters registration records online. Ditto with marriage records, birth certificates, addresses of listed phone numbers, etc.
Thing is, these records have always been a part of the “public record”. The big difference is that the internet has made it easier to access the data.
June 17th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
As an aside, but kinda in addition, to this – it’s truly alarming how many ‘tweeners’ are taking the most baldfaced, sexual pictures of themselves and sending them hither and yon to any Tom, Dick or Harry in their peergroup in the interest of ‘titillating’. (well, I guess we can only *hope* that these guys are within their peergroup, instead of being a 47 year old schlub that sits in their basement pretending to be a 12 year old boy from another city)
I wonder if these kids care that, by default, these photos get shared amongst rather large groups of people. I mean – kids aren’t exactly known for their subtlety at that age, and revenge is an almost Mafioso kind of endeavour for some of them. There have already been cases where ‘dissed’ boyfriends/girlfriends have placed the pictures in the most inconvenient of places, for all to see – to shame the once ‘object of their affections’. Hell, adults pull this kind of behavior too.
It is to squick.
And yay – Meatspace.
June 17th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
If you’ve ever given $250 or more to a political party, your name and home address are available to anyone who can access Google. For years already. And with Google maps, anyone can then see your house.
June 18th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Thanks for posting this, Lili. As a stalking researcher, it’s very interesting. As someone who’s starting a new project investigating the role of social networks in relationship initiation, maintenance, and dissolution (including stalking), this is terrific! Thanks for helping me out with my study
I’m in the process of finding out how people use these sites to do these things. Since I don’t use them (I do study stalking, after all), I’m in the midst of asking people what goes on relationship-wise on these sites. We’ve (myself and a collaborator) have just started this project, so we’re only in the beginning stages. Anyway, thanks for the info.