[LINK] "The Facebook Privacy War: What is Personal Data?"

[rfmcdonald]

Curtis Silver at Wired says pretty much what I think about outrage at social networking systems'--like Facebook's--use of users' personal data. What do you expect?

[D]ata is what you put in the computer, that goes to the internet and either gets lost or sold. That is what data is. It’s inevitable and a side effect of doing business on the internet. It’s also a side effect of doing pleasure on the internet, and that is where the adjective “personal” comes in. So what exactly is “personal” on the internet? Well, that’s easy. Nothing. Not a damn thing. You may think it is, but it isn’t. That’s not just paranoia talking - someone, somewhere has access to your personal data. From the I.T. guys running the bank servers, to the advertisers buying it from your email client, to Facebook opening it up for the world to see.

Don’t even get me started on privacy. It’s the internet. Not a shrinks office. Though that’s debatable sometimes.

The inherent problem then is expectations. People expect their “personal” data to remain personal and private. This expectation is set at some point by the site they are entering their personal data into. Or, it’s a site like Linkedin, where the expectation of complete transparency is set. The thing is, as Loren mentioned in the video, no one reads the terms of service contracts. When you click the little check box and hit continue, you are agreeing to pages and pages of legalese that pretty much state you don’t have any personal data and you have absolutely no privacy on that site. They own it all. This isn’t true for every site of course, but a good majority of them.

The lesson here is that you should only put data on the internet that you are comfortable with being shared, viewed or sold by people that are not you. In this era of social media and sharing, there have been so many cases of just blatant ignorance. What do you think will happen if you put inappropriate pictures on Facebook when your boss is on your friend list? Nothing? This isn’t the era of anonymous postings in forums and BBS chat rooms anymore. We remember that, but do our kids?

In order for them to understand what privacy and personal data is when it comes to the internet, we need to understand what it is. We need to educate ourselves by reading those terms of service contracts, noting which sites are sharing and which ones aren’t as well as being vigilant as to what kind of personal data we’re so eagerly sharing with the world. We need to realize that what we think is personal or private is nothing of the sort.