A family friend who works in IT for a large public school board gave her teenage daughter a lesson about sharing personal information on the Web. The Mom said they would assume they knew nothing about the daughter’s friend and just based on the information she had publicly posted on social media sites see what they could learn about her. It was a shocking and eye-opening experience as they followed the digital trail to her school, to her swim team, to who her parents are and right to the front door of the girl’s home. All of us, regardless of age need to ask ourselves questions around personal privacy and the social web.
Brad Buset presented a session at Podcamp Toronto 2010 entitled “Defaulting Privacy: Personal information and the social web“. Brad’s presentation about digital privacy helped shed some light on shifting privacy norms and all those little choices online citizens make every day.
Some good points Brad made in this session:
- Google yourself and you will see that you are a person online. What do you want to put out there?
- Are the answers to your security questions secure? Could someone find the answer by searching online?
- We need increased education. Brad suggests introducing every kid to the novel 1984 by George Orwell to open their eyes.
- Social Networks have made a shift from default private to default public. Google angered gmail users when its new social networking tool, Buzz, was found to reveal information about users without them being fully aware that it would be made public. Set your social networking privacy options.
Brad talked about Please Rob Me. The creators of Please Rob Me want to raise awareness of the privacy issues surrounding location based services like Foursquare, Brightkite, Google Buzz etc. Like our friend showing her teenage daughter the dangers of sharing too much, Please Rob Me is trying to shock people into understanding the vulnerablities of not protecting their privacy. They explain on their website:
The danger is publicly telling people where you are. This is because it leaves one place you’re definitely not… home. So here we are; on one end we’re leaving lights on when we’re going on a holiday, and on the other we’re telling everybody on the internet we’re not home.
For more from Brad read “Private Property” from his blog and have a look at the slides from his talk.
Questions to ask yourself:
- How do you decide what you share online?
- Why are you sharing this information? What is your goal?
- Look at the Networks you use; have you set your privacy controls?
- How does what you share impact your company’s or your own personal brand?
I think it is really important that we discuss this issue and educate those around us. Please add to the discussion by adding your comments to this post.
You may also be interested in these related posts:
- Online Reputation Management – Your Personal Brand
- PodCamp Toronto 2010
- What will happen to my websites when I die?
- Podcamp Extended
- The Social Media Highway – drive traffic to your Web site
