by admin on March 10, 2010
An interesting article on USAtoday popped up. A sign of things to come, where the old is new again. Back when the INTERNET was just the internet, when dial up was king, people would have to dive into dumpsters to get personal information. Dumpster diving as it was known, kept everyone from doing it. You had to be really dedicated. Today, print outs, and digging for passwords and information that can get you in the door is much easier. You can simply visit social networking sites. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla, and others, have enabled the sharing of information that just 15 years ago would never have made it to general consumption. People wouldn’t share information like this because people grew up with the idea that strangers were not supposed to know about who you are, where you are going, what you do, who you know, where you eat, what you eat, what you weigh.
So it comes as no surprise that a person so easily fell victim to a link. Just a simple, ordinary link.
You can read about it here.
In a nutshell, a woman went to a company gathering and later received an email saying that she should click on a link to see pictures from that gathering. All this, through Facebook. And why did it happen? Because it is so easy to share so much to so many. At this point, 400 million somebody’s accesses Facebook. That is more than the entire population of the United States. And in the US alone, Identity Theft harms millions of people. Nationwide insurance surveys suggest upwards of 10% in 2009 have fallen victim, so if you translate that to Facebook; you can expect 40 million people to have their identity stolen at some point. That point is a moving target. Be careful when it comes to your private data. When you post it online, you lose control of who has access to it.
by admin on March 6, 2010
I registered PrivacyMetrix.com and PrivacyMetrics.com along with its other affiliate domains, but let them drop. A painful fact had been evident as the years went on. Privacy is not being discussed by users of services like Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, and other social networks. When I first registered this domain around 10 years ago, it was the height of anxiety about online goings-on. I sought to measure the impact of privacy policy online. Sites like AOL, @HOME, and the many websites that were popping up, would say one thing, and do another. Today we have Facebook that does the same thing, or Google which launches a service that seeks to benefit the users, but instead, links an estranged ex-husband to his battered wife. More so, we have the quantification of all user data into something that directly translates into actionable information.
This site seeks to discuss the impact of online privacy policy, and in essence, find out who is part of one of three groups: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Obviously, The Good, are those who disclose their privacy policy, and adhere to it. The quality of that policy may also fall into one of those three categories. The Bad are those who disclose their policy, and do not adhere to it. Again, their policy may fall into a different category. And last, we have The Ugly. These are the organizations and sites that neither disclose a privacy policy, and what information they do gather; is abused to the worst extent.
For the record, this site has not developed a privacy policy yet, at least, not a formal one. The site will ask for data such as your username, and an email address to contact you should you lose a password. That will only happen if you register for an account. And that is all the site cares about. As the site administrator, it is asked that you refrain from poor behavior, and provide enough information that allows you to recover a password on your own. No one involved with this site will be able to recover your password for you. If you are interested in becoming a contributor to the site, feel free to get in touch.