MediaJoltz

So there has been a buzz about privacy on the Internet and I decided to write a post about it. This takes into consideration three questions:

1. What information are you giving to the world through the Internet?
2. What information are others giving to the world through the Internet about you?
3. Who is responsible for the information found?

This post follows one from my good friend Phil801. After sending him a post Christopher Penn wrote on the Matrix 2.0 about what someone can easily find out about you, Phil did a search on himself and shares the results. He does live a good portion of his life online and is fully aware of what can be found. By using some of the sites he mentions, I found out all about my sister-in-law who said she doesn’t have anything on the Internet…

Let me preface this with the fact that while I am not paranoid that something bad WILL in fact happen, I am the type that would rather not make personal information freely accessible. I understand that nothing is private, NOTHING IS PRIVATE, but for me, I would rather that someone had to WORK and pay money or do whatever to find my information than to find out I personally gave them everything they needed.

NOTHING IS PRIVATE
Nope, not a thing. Here is an article “They know all about you” about the AOL incident where they posted a database consisting of 3 months worth of searches. They substituted numbers for names, but it wasn’t hard to figure out who some people were. Think about the searches you do and then think about the world knowing what you’ve searched for.

The problem continues when even though AOL took the data down within hours, it had already been posted on several other sites. Remember, what you post on the Internet is there forever. The Internet is a never ending archive that never forgets or deletes.

BE AWARE OF WHAT YOU GIVE
Just as the article “They know all about you” says, we do give up a lot of information about ourselves. We better not be naïve about what we have given though, don’t be surprised that someone has your

-email address, (if you have a gmail account, Google has your address and an archive of your emails. “Gmail stores, processes and maintains your messages, contact lists and other data related to your account in order to provide the service to you. When you use Gmail, Google servers automatically record certain information about your use of Gmail. Similar to other web services, Google records information such as account activity (including storage usage, number of log-ins), data displayed or clicked on (including UI elements, ads, links); and other log information (including browser type, IP-address, date and time of access, cookie ID and referrer URL.”

-if you’ve bought anything online, you’ve given out your credit card info, (even if it’s a secure site, THEY still have that information).

-Amazon has archived what you’ve bought and even has an idea of what you would like!

Have you been on Facebook lately? Here is a picture from Facebook of the process to add an application to my profile:

I can uncheck all of them if I want to except for the top one, the one that happens to say: “here is everything about me” interesting…

WHAT IF I DIDN’T WANT THAT UP THERE?
Now we approach the idea of information on the Internet that you didn’t put there. I’m talking about third party sites that gather information about you…here is one www.web.public-records-now.com where you can find me, where I live and pay only $60 for more information.

“…you gave me the answer I needed…” “…gave me the detailed information that I needed to locate my son” Who is to say a predator won’t find James’ son too?

OR, someone who wanted to find more information about me could simply peruse through my friends information and find more about me through my friends’ pictures of me, conversations they’ve had with me, or anything else my friends post. Do my friends have my permission to do that, do they NEED my permission to post a picture online that I’m in? With photo tagging, someone can find out the places I’ve been and the people I associate with without ever visiting a single page that I’ve actually contributed to. Is this fair? HMMMM….

TAKE THAT DOWN!
Recently I’ve heard a lot about companies like ReputationDefender and DefendMyName popping up and charging fees for finding and getting rid of reputation destroying content. There are several cases where I think that companies like this are doing right by offering their services. Instances where posting false, libel or slander, information just as in any form of media where this is illegal calls for help when an individual themselves are not able to get through the red tape. An example comes from an article in the Wall Street Journal where an ex-boy friend posts this woman’s phone number online and she begins receiving phone calls:

“Janel Lee, a mortgage loan closer in Minong, Wis., sought ReputationDefender out after her ex-boyfriend began posting her work and cellphone numbers in response to several questions on Yahoo Answers, including “What is 50 Cent’s phone number?”
She got 15 to 20 calls a day, sometimes as late as 3 a.m. One after-hours voicemail, presumably intended for the rapper, was a lengthy rap performance. “I sing blues, jazz and rock. This was painful,” said Ms. Lee.
Ms. Lee said she contacted Yahoo Inc. directly but was unable to get most of the information taken down. So she paid ReputationDefender about $240 for a two-year membership, plus about $150 for the posts that the company, over three months, got removed. “It was quite a great relief knowing that someone was working on it for me,” she said. Mr. Fertik said Yahoo removed the information after being contacted by ReputationDefender.”

BUT, personally I think that people are also using these services simply because they are embarrassed and not taking responsibility for their actions. Anything you say, do, take a picture of, or have someone take a picture of you saying, doing, etc, CAN end up on the internet.

This video is of two girls in a restaurant setting with some boys. Because of the sexual nature I am not including the link.

The scenario is that these boys videotaped these two girls kissing. But it isn’t the kiss that makes this video popular with close to half a million views; it’s the statement the girl on the right makes just before they kissed. “As long as it doesn’t end up on the internet!” Wow, for their sakes, I hope that their future employers don’t find this video.

But is it right for them to demand that this video be taken down now because it is embarrassing? They kissed in front of all the people at the restaurant. Who is to say strangers sitting around them at that public place didn’t see them kissing, how are they different than strangers on the Internet? What do you think? When is it a matter of legal vs. not taking responsibility for things you’ve done in life?

GOVERNMENT’S PRYING EYE
I had a conversation the other night that got me thinking about privacy and the government. Is it wrong for the government to be searching your personal information published online to get an idea about the people of the country? Does it have the right to go through myspace profiles and blogs and look for clues about possible actions people might make. Does government have a right to have access to search information?

Take for instance the example used in the article referenced before “They know all about you”

“On April 4, for instance, user 14162375, the melancholy Portuguese-American in Florida, seems to have passed out on the keyboard at 6.20pm, when he asked, suddenly, “llllfkkgjnnvjjfokrb” then “vvvvbmkmjk” and “vvglhkitopppfoppr”. An hour later he had recovered enough to search for variations on his wife’s name - he thought she might have moved to New England. On the evening of April 16, matters came to a head. “My cheating wife,” he typed; and then, five times, “I want to kill myself,” and then “I want to make my wife suffer,” followed quickly by “Kill my wifes mistress,” “My wifes ass,” “A cheating wife”. Two days after that he was back looking for audio surveillance and bugging equipment and four weeks later he seemed to have cheered up and was looking for motorcycle insurance.”

Would it be wrong for the government to have access to searches and put a tag on this man when he started searching “I want to make my wife suffer” and “kill my wife’s mistress”? Would they be able to stop things like the Columbine Shooting and more recently the Virginia Tech Shooting? In an article found in USA Today we find out that the Virginia Tech shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, made illegal purchases of guns and ammunition through Ebay. Is it possible he did some searches on the internet?

What is your take on internet privacy? Where are the boundaries and lines? Is everything black and white or are there exceptions? Do you think we all have a right to put whatever we want on the internet even if it involves others?

Posted in Blogging tips |